Nagesh Mahanthappa

Nagesh Mahanthappa Ph.D., M.B.A., is a distinguished entrepreneur with extensive executive experience, most recently the founding president and chief executive officer of Scholar Rock, Inc.. During his initial ​eight-year tenure, Nagesh took the company public and lead two distinct drug candidates into clinical testing; he subsequently served as interim CEO guiding the company’s lead program into pivotal trials. His previous experiences include being the founding employee and vice president of corporate development at Avila Therapeutics, Inc. (acquired by Celgene), and previously a founding employee of Alnylam Pharmaceuticals where he rose to the position of vice president of scientific & strategic development. Before that, he served as manager of business development at Vertex Pharmaceuticals and had several positions with scientific and strategic responsibility at Ontogeny (now a part of Curis, Inc.).

Nagesh started in the biotechnology industry as a staff scientist at Cambridge NeuroScience, and was a founder of TwistDx, a DNA diagnostics company acquired by Inverness Medical Innovations (now a part of Abbott Laboratories). Nagesh currently serves on the boards of Abata Therapeutics, Exo Therapeutics, and Kojin Therapeutics. Nagesh completed his post-doctoral training at E.K. Shriver Center for Mental Retardation (then an affiliate of Massachusetts General Hospital) and Harvard Medical School after receiving his Ph.D. in neurobiology from the California Institute of Technology. Nagesh received his B.A. in biology and chemistry from the University of Colorado, and his M.B.A. from the F.W. Olin Graduate School of Management at Babson College.