Noubar Afeyan

Dr. Noubar Afeyan is co-founder and chairman of Moderna and the founder and CEO of Flagship Pioneering, an enterprise where entrepreneurially-minded scientists invent pioneering solutions to improve human health, nutrition, and sustainability. Dr. Afeyan is a lecturer at Harvard Business School; and from 2000 to 2016 was a senior lecturer at MIT’s Sloan School of Management where he taught courses on technology entrepreneurship, innovation, and leadership. He teaches and speaks around the world on topics ranging from entrepreneurship, innovation, and economic development to biological engineering, new medicines, and renewable energy.

Dr. Afeyan has co-founded and helped build over 40 life science and technology startups during his career as an inventor, entrepreneur, and CEO. He was the founder and CEO of PerSeptive Biosystems, a leader in bio-instrumentation that grew to $100 million in annual revenues. After PerSeptive’s acquisition by Perkin Elmer/Applera Corporation in 1998, he became senior vice president and chief business officer of Applera, where he initiated and oversaw the creation of Celera Genomics.