Rob Chess

Mr. Chess is a serial entrepreneur in the life sciences field. He currently is Chairman of Nektar Therapeutics, (NASDAQ:NKTR), a health care biotechnology company. He is Lead Director of Twist Biosciences (NASDAQ:TWST), which produces synthetic genes using an innovative high-throughput silicon-based manufacturing process. Chess is also a Co-Founder, former Chairman, and a Board Member of Biota Technology, which is pioneering DNA sequencing for optimizing oil and gas production. He joined Nektar Therapeutics as its first non-founder employee in 1991 and led the company as CEO from 1992-1999 and as Chairman since then. Chess co-founded and was President of Penederm, a dermatology company that went public and was acquired by Mylan Laboratories, and was the start-up CEO and later Chairman of OPXBIO, a renewable chemicals company which was sold to Cargill.

He started his career in the technology field and held management positions at Intel and Metaphor Computer Systems (later acquired by IBM). Chess served on the White House Staff in the first Bush Administration as a White House Fellow and Associate Director of the White House Office of Economic and Domestic Policy. He is a lecturer at the Stanford Graduate School of Business, where he teaches courses in health care and entrepreneurship. Chess received a BS in engineering with honors from Caltech and an MBA from Harvard.