Dr. Irene Rombel is an industry veteran with 25+ years of leadership experience spanning biotechnology, big pharma, consulting, investing, and academia. Prior to founding BioCurie, Irene was Chief of Staff, Research, at Spark Therapeutics; Senior Director of Strategy and External Innovation at Janssen, J&J; Founder and President of Biomedical Intelligence LLC; a biotechnology hedge fund analyst; and Assistant Professor at UT Southwestern Medical Center in the Center for Biomedical Inventions. Dr. Rombel is on Columbia University’s Translational Therapeutics Accelerator Steering Committee and the Columbia University Irving Cancer Drug Discovery Advisory Board. Her postdoctoral research at UC Berkeley and UC Davis made fundamental scientific contributions to the understanding of transcriptional regulation and promoter-enhancer control of gene expression. Dr. Rombel received her Ph.D. in Biochemistry and B.Sc. (First Class Honors) in Biochemistry with a double major in Microbiology from the University of Otago, New Zealand, and her MBA from Southern Methodist University, Dallas, Texas. She is also a registered U.S. Patent Agent.