MANAGEMENT
Scientific Advisors
Technical Advisors
Careers

Cofounder, President and CEO
Mr. Akhtari has more than 20 years of experience developing and commercializing software products for the analysis, visualization and management of biological data. As President and CEO of Silicon Genetics, Mr. Akhtari led the team that developed GeneSpring and Varia, the most popular and widely used software packages for visualization and analysis of genomics and genotyping data. These products are used by thousands of researchers in more than 600 leading pharmaceutical companies, academic institutions and major research organizations around the world. Silicon Genetics was recognized as one of the fastest-growing technology companies in North America with inclusion on the Deloitte Technology FAST 500. Silicon Genetics was acquired by Agilent Technologies in 2004. Mr. Akhtari has held executive management positions at several other life sciences software companies whose gold-standard products include WinNonlin, GeneWorld, MacVector and PCGene.

Cofounder, VP of Product Management
Mr. Kupershmidt has had extensive experience in the design, implementation and integration of software solutions for organizations involved in basic research, clinical and drug discovery efforts. Prior to NextBio, Mr. Kupershmidt was the Director of Professional Services at Silicon Genetics. There he helped develop and customize software solutions for the analysis and management of high throughput data generated by genomic, proteomic and genotyping technologies. Mr. Kupershmidt joined Silicon Genetics as an early stage startup and successfully worked with hundreds of academic institutions and commercial enterprises. Previously, Mr. Kupershmidt carried out research as a geneticist at the UCSD Howard Hughes Medical Institute where he studied transcriptional mechanisms of gene expression regulation during pituitary development. Mr. Kupershmidt is currently a Ph.D. candidate at the Royal Institute of Stockholm in Sweden.

VP of Engineering
Dr. Alag is a seasoned software professional with over fifteen years of experience in machine learning and over a decade of experience in commercial software development and management. His areas of expertise include building large-scale distributed SaaS applications, search, applying intelligence and personalization to Web 2.0 applications and delivering high quality software. Prior to joining NextBio, Dr. Alag worked as a consultant with Johnson & Johnson's BabyCenter where he helped develop their personalization engine. Prior to that he was the Chief Software Architect and Director of Application Engineering at Rearden Commerce. Dr. Alag began his career at GE R&D and has held senior positions at Computing Technologies International and Black Pearl. Dr. Alag earned his PhD in engineering from UC Berkeley and has published numerous peer-reviewed articles.

CFO, General Counsel
Mr. Seyedin-Noor has worked as an advisor to leading private and public technology and life sciences companies, including Amgen, InterMune, VaxGen, Nuvelo, DivX, Ariba, OpenWave, Inktomi and Cadence, as well as dozens of startups, VCs and private equity firms. Prior to joining NextBio, Mr. Seyedin-Noor was an investment banker at Goldman Sachs & Co. and a Vice President at Banc of America Securities, where he advised on corporate finance and M&A matters. Mr. Seyedin-Noor started his career as an attorney at Wilson Sonsini Goodrich & Rosati and Cooley Godward LLP, where he advised on both corporate transactions and complex litigations matters. Mr. Seyedin-Noor obtained a J.D. from the Harvard Law School and a B.A. in economics from Pomona College, with honors. In addition, Mr. Seyedin-Noor served as the elected Editor-in-Chief of the Harvard International Law Journal and is a published author on international legal issues.

Director of Scientific Computing
Dr. Q. Jane Su has extensive experience developing strategies and delivering computational solutions for bioscience research. Prior to joining NextBio, she was the group leader of computational biology at Abgenix, where she designed and built several high throughput integrated informatics systems to support target discovery, target validation and drug lead characterization. Before that, she was at DoubleTwist, where she developed a number of computational methods, including an ontology-based knowledge management system. During her postdoctoral work at Stanford, Dr. Su developed novel algorithms to build the eBLOCKS database, maximizing sensitivity and specificity to detect functional signatures. Dr. Su has patent applications in antibody structure modeling as well as a number of drug discoveries for cancer and inflammation. She holds a Ph.D. in chemistry from UC Berkeley.

Director of Software Engineering
Mr. Sonaseth has had extensive experience in architecting and developing large scale software applications. Prior to joining NextBio, he worked as a Systems Architect at Hewlett Packard where he designed and developed several large scale web-based applications, including applications that had millions of customers. Previous to that, he led the development of several consumer and business applications at Verizon, including one of the first telecom B2B applications. As a student at Texas A&M he co-created the first searchable web-based bibliography application for a university department. He holds an M.E. in Electrical Engineering from Texas A&M University, in College Station, Texas, and a B.E. in Industrial Electronics from the University of Pune, in Pune, India. He is also a Certified ScrumMaster and an avid promoter of agile software development at NextBio.