October 19, 2023

Vilya

Vilya appointed Cyrus Harmon as its chief executive officer. Harmon brings decades of experience as an executive and entrepreneur at the intersection of drug discovery, molecular biology and computation to the role, and will also join the board of directors. Previously, Harmon co-founded and served as CEO of Olema Oncology, a company focused on women's cancers, before transitioning to the role of chief research officer. He also co-founded and served as CEO of Neomorphic, a genomic software company acquired by Affymetrix. Harmon completed his Ph.D. and bachelor's degrees in molecular and cell biology at the University of California, Berkeley. Harmon joins Katerina Leftheris, Vilya's chief scientific officer, on the company's leadership team. Leftheris held senior roles in drug discovery at Bristol-Myers Squibb, Pliant Therapeutics, Celgene and Vitae Therapeutics. Also, Vilya co-founders Sabah Oney and Inca Dieterich will join the board of directors. Vilya named its scientific advisory board, which includes Brian Shoichet of the University of California, San Francisco; Jennifer Petter, founder and chief innovation officer of Arrakis Therapeutics; Nick Meanwell, former vice president at Bristol-Myers Squibb; William Greenlee of Medchem Discovery Consulting; and Philip Dawson of Scripps Research. Vilya is a computational biotechnology company creating a novel class of medicines to precisely target disease biology. Vilya was co-founded by a team of scientists from the Institute of Protein Design led by David Baker, and ARCH Venture Partners. The company has operations in Seattle and South San Francisco.