Alice Chen

Alice Chen, Ph.D., serves as Executive Vice President. She joined Accelerator in 2013 as a Principal to support portfolio company operations and provide executive oversight of preclinical development activities across the portfolio. Alice is actively involved in sourcing and evaluating emerging biotechnology investment opportunities and has played an instrumental role in the formation and oversight of several Accelerator portfolio companies, including Acylin Therapeutics, Petra Pharma (acquired by a global pharmaceutical company), Nemean Pharma, Rodeo Therapeutics (acquired by Amgen Inc.) and Magnolia Neurosciences.

Alice has more than 15 years of research and drug development experience, principally in small molecule therapeutics. Before joining Accelerator, she served as a scientific consultant and drug development project leader for several venture-backed biotechnology companies. Before that, she served as Director of Technologies at Qwell Pharmaceuticals, a venture-backed biotechnology company developing novel, small-molecule drugs focused on cancer and inflammation. She also contributed to partnership and M&A initiatives.

Dr. Chen completed her doctoral training in the laboratory of Dr. Chaitan Khosla at Stanford University, where she focused on protein engineering and protein characterization. She holds a Ph.D. in Chemical Engineering from Stanford University and a B.S. degree in Chemical Engineering from U.C. Berkeley. She served as an Engineering Fellow at Merck & Company and is a graduate of the Kauffman Fellows Program (Class 19). Dr. Chen currently serves on the board of Life Science Washington, the state’s life science trade association, and various technology review committees in the U.S. and abroad.