Ron Swanson

Ronald V. Swanson is currently Chief Scientific Officer at Tyra Biosciences a company focused on targeting acquired resistance in oncology. Ron graduated from UCSD with a B.A. in Biochemistry and Cell Biology in 1985 and from UC Berkeley in 1991 with a Ph.D. in Molecular Biology under the guidance of Alex Glazer studying post-translational modifications of proteins. His postdoctoral fellowship was done with Mel Simon at Caltech working on protein-protein interactions in signal transduction and characterizing thermostable proteins. Subsequently Ron was Director of Genomics and Protein Expression at then biotech startup Diversa working on enzyme discovery, environmental genomics, and directed evolution. In 2000, Ron joined the newly founded Syrrx as Director of Molecular Biology focused on high-throughput protein structure determination and structure based drug design. After Syrrx, he was co-founder and CSO at ActiveSight a pioneering structural biology contract research organization. In 2006, Ron joined Johnson & Johnson where he ran the Lead Discovery & Optimization group based in San Diego focused on engineering of antibodies, peptides and protein therapeutics. He was Senior Director of New Platforms and Technologies before retiring from J&J last year to return to a biotech startup environment. Ron is the author of over 50 scientific publications and an inventor on 30 patents with other applications pending.