Alex Colville is the Co-Founder and General Partner of Age1, a leading longevity-focused venture fund. He previously served as Chief of Staff at the Amaranth Foundation and holds a PhD in genetics from Stanford, where he studied rejuvenation biology in Tom Rando’s lab.

Brandi Simpson is the Senior Vice President of Business Development at Switch Therapeutics. She is a biotech executive with 20+ years of experience in corporate and business development, operations, and leadership. Formerly VP of Corporate and Business Development at Voyager Therapeutics, she has led transactions exceeding $6B in total value and previously served as CEO of Navigen.

Christian Howell is the CEO of Cognito Therapeutics, advancing innovative non-invasive sensory stimulation technology to improve outcomes in neurodegenerative disease. He previously led strategic growth initiatives at Aetion and Medtronic.

Danny is an investor and engineer. He previously worked at Breakout Ventures. He holds a PhD in Biomedical Engineering from Boston University, where he was an NIH F31 Fellow, with a research focus in computational neuroscience.

Dan Rizzuto is the Founder, President, and CTO of Nia Therapeutics, where he is building the world’s first personalized neurostimulation system for memory loss. He developed the company’s core technology at the University of Pennsylvania with Dr. Michael Kahana and has led large-scale neurotechnology efforts at Northstar Neuroscience, the Swedish Neuroscience Institute, and the Allen Institute for Brain Science.

Ed Boyden is the Y. Eva Tan Professor in Neurotechnology at MIT, an HHMI and McGovern Institute investigator, and leader of the Synthetic Neurobiology Group, where he develops powerful tools to understand and repair the brain. His work spans advancing neural technologies, revealing fundamental brain mechanisms, and laying foundations for biologically accurate brain simulations.

Heer Joisher is a PhD graduate from Harvard Medical School in Developmental Biology, where her research investigates retinal development to inform the biology of human macular disease. She currently serves as a Committee Member supporting Nucleate’s Board and is the former Co-President of Nucleate, Co-Founder of Emerging FemTech, and a former Harvard Medical School global education leader, with a track record of founding and leading life science innovation initiatives.

Heike Hering is a neuroscientist specializing in the molecular mechanisms of cognitive and neurodegenerative disorders, with training at the Max Planck Institute and MIT. She has led early discovery programs at Memory Pharmaceuticals, Merck, and EMD Serono, advancing new therapeutic approaches for Alzheimer’s disease and multiple sclerosis.

J.L. Ross is the Co-Founder and CEO of Alleo Labs, leveraging AI to transform neuroscience drug discovery and enable precision medicine. A former Vice President and Head of Neuroscience at Immuneering with over a decade at NINDS, he holds a PhD in Neuroscience from Brown University and serves on the Board of the Alzheimer’s Association.

Dr. Jean Hebert is a neuroscientist and geneticist at ARPA-H whose work focuses on repairing age-related brain damage through regenerative medicine, informed by his research on stem cells, neurodegeneration, and cortical health. Formerly a professor at Albert Einstein College of Medicine and founder of BE Therapeutics, he is also the author of Replacing Aging and trained at UCSF and Stanford.

Jim leads the Wyss Institute Brain Targeting Program, developing breakthrough approaches to deliver drugs across the blood–brain barrier and enabling collaboration across industry, academia, and philanthropy. A former Abbott executive who helped spearhead the Humira® acquisition and a biotech founder, he holds MD and PhD degrees from Harvard Medical School.

John Bailey is the Head of Hardware at Until Labs. He previously served as a Member of Technical Staff at Until and conducted research in neurotechnology and neuromodulation at the Stanford Artificial Retina Project and the Wu Tsai Neurosciences Institute.

Kat Kajderowicz is a Neuroscience PhD candidate at MIT, where she studies how hibernation biology enables cells to survive extreme stress, with applications to organ transplantation, critical care, and aging. She is also a Principal at Age1, has worked with multiple venture firms, and founded DNA Deviants, a global biotech community of 2,000+ members.

Kimberly Scearce-Levie is the Chief Scientific Officer at Manifold Bio. She previously served as Chief Development Officer at Cajal Neuroscience and spent nearly eight years at Denali Therapeutics leading translational neuroscience efforts. Across academia and industry, her work has centered around understanding the molecular and systems biology of neurological disease and translating that knowledge into therapeutic strategies.

Leigh Hochberg is a neurologist and neuroscientist focused on developing neurotechnologies for paralysis and neurological disorders. He leads clinical research on the BrainGate2 Neural Interface System, studying cortical neuronal ensemble activities with the goal of creating therapeutic applications. He is a Fellow of the American Academy of Neurology and the American Neurological Association, and has received major research funding from the NIH, VA, and leading foundations.

Mark Tomishima is Senior Vice President of Platform Discovery at BlueRock Therapeutics, advancing pluripotent stem cell platforms to translate cutting-edge science into scalable, clinically relevant therapies. He trained in Lorenz Studer’s lab at Memorial Sloan Kettering, led the SKI Stem Cell Research Facility, and received his PhD in Molecular Biology from Princeton.

Dr. Jacko is a biotech leader who has built and led R&D organizations across industry, including key roles at Serotiny (acquired by Johnson & Johnson) and BridgeBio Pharma, where he led programs in neurodegeneration and inflammatory disease. He has invented high-throughput screening technologies and uncovered drivers of neuronal maturation and aging, supported by a technical foundation in genetics, neuroscience, and RNA biology.

Dr. Merit Cudkowicz is Chief of Neurology at Massachusetts General Hospital and the Julieanne Dorn Professor of Neurology at Harvard Medical School, where she leads major programs dedicated to advancing treatments for ALS. A pioneer in ALS clinical research, she co-founded the Northeast ALS Consortium, has guided over 15 multi-center trials, and directs the NIH-funded NeuroNEXT Clinical Coordination Center.

Oliver Armitage is the VP of Neural Data & Clinical Strategy at Axoft, where he builds precision neuroscience and neurotechnology platforms spanning brain–computer interfaces, neural data, and therapeutic development. He previously worked at BIOS Health and the University of Cambridge, and focuses on translating cutting-edge neuroscience into real-world clinical applications.

Stuart A. Lipton is a physician–scientist known for elucidating the mechanism of the FDA-approved Alzheimer’s drug memantine and discovering protein S-nitrosylation. He developed NitroSynapsin, a disease-modifying therapeutic that protects synapses and improves neurobehavioral outcomes in animal models of Alzheimer’s disease. His laboratory uses human iPSC-derived neurons, cerebral organoids, and in vivo models to develop novel therapies for AD, PD, vascular dementia, and ASD.

Tim Turner is a Global Project Head for Neurology at Sanofi, with leadership spanning programs in multiple sclerosis and neuroinflammation. Previously, he has served in the leadership of multiple biotechnology commpanies and served as an Assistant Professor at Tufts University's School of Medicine. He received his Ph.D. in Pharmacology from Harvard University.

Dr. Yau is an Assistant in Neurology at Massachusetts General Hospital and an Instructor at Harvard Medical School. Her research focuses on how early vascular risk factors lead to white matter injury in the brain, clarifying mechanisms of early brain aging and informing strategies to slow cognitive decline.