Dr. Chet Markwalter is the Senior Director of Scientific Operations at Optimeos Life Sciences, a seed stage non-viral gene therapy company commercializing his PhD dissertation and that of long-time collaborator Rob Pagels. Working closely with CEO Shahram Hejazi, they have built the scientific team at Optimeos and led the preclinical development of Optimeos’ CINC nanoparticle platform. Chet played a central role in their successful seed funding round and in their SBIR grant strategy, achieving a 90% funding rate.

Chet earned a Bachelors in Chemical Engineering from the University of Delaware and a PhD from Princeton, advised by Prof. Robert Prud’homme. Prior to his PhD, Chet was a process engineer at Bristol-Myers Squibb, where he developed the synthetic routes for small molecule drug candidates and supported CMC regulatory filings for daclatasvir. He has published 14 manuscripts and is a co-inventor on 6 patent families held by Optimeos.