Jennifer C. Petter

Dr. Petter is the founding CEO and current Chief Innovation Officer of Arrakis Therapeutics. Previously, Jennifer was Vice President of Drug Discovery at Avila Therapeutics and, upon the acquisition of Avila by Celgene in 2012, she became Celgene’s Vice President of Chemistry, a position she held until leaving to found Arrakis in 2015. Prior to Avila, Jennifer served as Vice President of Research at Mersana Therapeutics, Director of Small Molecule Drug Discovery at Biogen and as Section Head in Oncology Chemistry at Sandoz/Novartis. Prior to her career in industry, Jennifer was an Assistant Professor of Chemistry at the University of Pittsburgh. Jennifer holds an A.B. in chemistry from Dartmouth College and earned her PhD in organic chemistry at Duke University with Ned Porter. She was a post-doctoral fellow in Ron Breslow’s group at Columbia University.