About Me

I'm a scientist, entrepreneur, and investor currently based in Berkeley, CA. I work at the intersection of aging biology, neuroscience, and frontier biotechnology. After completing PhD and postdoc work, I left my Stanford fellows position to join The Amaranth Foundation, where I am a group leader and the head of investments. Along the way, I have founded 3 companies working in drug development, diagnostics, and computer vision technology, and provided consulting services to the biotech VC industry in San Francisco.

Values

My core values are agency, curiosity, and compassion. I believe the most important axis of personal agency is health. Without health, your freedom is fundamentally constrained. Biological aging robs us collectively of more health than all other ailments and insults combined. Worldwide, aging is responsible for 50% of all deaths and reductions in quality of life. To create a world where everyone has complete agency over their health and freedom to pursue their goals and passions, we must discover how to stop and reverse the aging process.

Some academics, scientists, and others I meet object that curing aging will exacerbate inequality or rob life of its fundamental meaning. I think they are wrong. My family comes from humble roots in Tuba City, AZ, and Flint, MI. Regular people have much more to gain from rapamycin and metformin than billionaires who already have access to perfect diets, stress-free lives, and elite healthcare. As to meaning, I get more of that from time with loved ones and my passions, and I suspect you do too. Send me your best argument for why we need aging and death, and I will gladly debate you! 300,000 years of cultural rationalization of death has taught us we need our biological limits, but the future can be bigger and brighter than you imagine.

Adventures

I have many passions and a fullhearted love for life. I have a particular love for the land of the American Southwest, where I grew up in a small town near the Grand Canyon. Most of all, I love an adventure. Some of my recent wanderings include leading a 20 day whitewater rafting trip through the Grand Canyon, walking ~1200 miles solo across the length of Japan, climbing The Nose on El Capitan in Yosemite Valley, and speed hiking the John Muir Trail over 7 days.

Music

I am a classically trained violinist, and once upon a time was the youngest member of multiple professional orchestras in Arizona. Nowadays, I am picking up the guitar, the handpan, and electronic music production. Check out some of my music here.