Leadership

Peter is a scientist-turned entrepreneur who has held positions at small, medium and large biotech companies during his 20 year career. He is also an angel investor and advisor to multiple biotech companies. Prior to Eclipsebio, Dr. Chu was founding CEO of Eclipse Therapeutics, a Biogen spin-out developing cancer stem cell antibodies. After Eclipse Therapeutics was acquired by Bionomics Limited, Dr. Chu led Bionomics’ US operations and successful Phase I clinical trials for BNC101 antibody therapy in colon cancer.

Dr. Chu began his career as a scientist at Biogen Idec, where he led the cancer stem cells program and also worked with business development and new ventures to evaluate licensing and investment opportunities. He is a graduate of McGill University, where he majored in microbiology and immunology, and holds a Ph.D from the biomedical sciences program at UC San Diego and a master’s degree from the University of Toronto.

Sidney brings over 30 years of experience across venture capital, executive leadership, and public sector administration. She specialises in guiding biotech and medtech companies through the complexities of product-market fit, regulatory navigation, and international expansion. With a proven track record of scaling startups and advising national health platforms, she provides boards with a unique ecosystem view that bridges deep-tech investment with operational excellence.

Dr Sidney Yee is currently a Venture Partner at iGlobe Partners, which has a strong history and investments track record in deeptech, with a healthy portfolio in semicon tech, fintech, smart cities and tech biohealth sectors. She is Board member of companies in stroke and dementia treatment, women’s health, infectious diseases and digital health. Previously, as founding CEO of the Diagnostics Development (DxD) Hub, Dr Yee built an organisation with expertise to rapidly translate R&D output into deployable market products. During the COVID-19 pandemic, her leadership enabled DxD Hub to develop and deploy multiple COVID-19 diagnostics products within months. For her effort, Dr Yee was conferred the Public Administration Gold Medal. Dr Yee also serves as founding co-chair of the ASEAN Diagnostics Development (Dx) Initiative, which focuses on developing diagnostic products for ASEAN members states. Dr Yee serves on governing boards and advisory panels of National Additive Manufacturing Innovation Cluster, National Health Innovation Centre, Institute for Digital Molecular Analytics and Science, and CREATInG Initiative, a Gates-funded global health initiative. She is also a long-time member of BHSC in her individual capacity. Dr Yee is Adjunct Associate Professor at the Centre of Regulatory Excellence (CoRE) at Duke-NUS Medical School, as well as at the Dept of Obstetrics and Gynaecology, National University of Singapore YLL School of Medicine, to support innovation translation from bench to bedside.

Gene Yeo PhD MBA is a Professor of Cellular and Molecular Medicine at the University of California San Diego (UCSD). Dr. Yeo has a BSc in Chemical Engineering and a BA in Economics from the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign, a Ph.D. in Computational Neuroscience from Massachusetts Institute of Technology and an MBA from the UCSD Rady School of Management. His primary research interest is in understanding the importance of RNA processing and the roles that RNA binding proteins (RBPs) play in development and disease. Dr. Yeo has authored over 200 peer-reviewed publications. Gene is on the Editorial Boards of the journals RNA, Cell Reports, Cell Research and eLife, and on the Advisory Board of Review commons. Gene is also a Paul Allen Distinguished Investigator (2020) and received the 2021 Elisa Izaurralde Award for Innovation in Research, Teaching and Service from the RNA Society. Gene has co-founded multiple biotech companies including Eclipsebio. In addition, Gene currently serves on the scientific advisory boards of n-Lorem, the Allen Institute of Immunology, LGC, Insitro, IntronX, Atomic.AI, Automera and Amberbio. Gene is a senior advisor to Accelerator Life Sciences Partners. In 2022, Gene found himself on the list of the top 50 serial academic entrepreneurs by BIOS. Gene recently received the inaugural Entrepreneurial Achievement Award by the Rady School of Management in 2023.

Daniel Vasella, M.D., works as board director, coach and strategic consultant for top executives. After the foundation of Novartis in 1996 he led the company for 17 years as CEO (1996-2010) and Chairman of the Board of Directors (1999-2013). Since 2013 Dr. Vasella is Honorary Chairman of the Board of Directors for Novartis AG. Before the Novartis merger, Dr. Vasella was CEO of Sandoz Pharma Ltd. and a member of the Sandoz Group Executive Committee. From 1988 to 1992, he worked for Sandoz Pharmaceuticals Corporation in the United States, prior to which he held a number of medical positions in Switzerland. He graduated with an M.D. from the University of Bern and completed executive training at Harvard Business School. Dr. Vasella also trained as psychoanalyst and executive coach. He was awarded an honorary doctorate from the Faculty of Medicine at the University of Basel and the Harvard Business School Alumnus Award and many other distinctions. Dr. Vasella is a member of the board of directors of PepsiCo, Inc., the American Express Company, SciClone Pharmaceuticals Inc. and several biotech companies. He is also a foreign honorary member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, as well as of various cultural establishments. Daniel Vasella is married and father of three children.

Eckhard Jankowsky is a strategic advisor / consultant with focus on the mRNA space. He has continuously worked for the last three decades on RNA-related topics ranging from RNA chemistry, biochemistry, biology and mRNA medicines. Eckhard was the Vice President of RNA Science at Moderna and prior to this role, Professor and Director of the Center for RNA Science and Therapeutics at Case Western Reserve University in Cleveland, OH. Dr. Jankowsky has published more than 100 research papers, reviews and book chapters, including high impact articles in Cell, Science, and Nature

Dr Peach has 30 years of drug discovery and development experience in the pharmaceutical and biotechnology industry. Robert co-founded Receptos, becoming Chief Scientific Officer and raising $59M in venture capital and $800M in an IPO. Receptos was acquired in 2015 by Celgene for $7.8B. Robert held senior executive and scientific positions in other companies including Apoptos (co-founder), Biogen Idec, IDEC Pharmaceuticals and Bristol-Myers Squibb, supporting in-licensing, acquisition and venture investments. His extensive drug discovery and development experience in autoimmune and inflammatory diseases, and cancer has resulted in multiple drugs entering clinical trials and 4 registered drugs. He currently serves on the Board of Directors of Amplia Therapeutics, AdAlta and ReKover Therapeutics, and has been a Scientific Advisory Board member and consultant for several other biotechnology companies.

Dr. Underwood is Vice President of Technology Development at RNAConnect, a biotech developing enzymatic tools for visualizing and manipulating RNA. He was previously at PacBio where his work focused on method development with specific focus on RNA and profiling difficult regions of the genome and transcriptome using long read sequencing. He previously led a technology development group in the UW Northwest Genome Center. There he built better ways to study genomes and transcriptomes using high-throughput Illumina sequencing technologies, at production scale. He has co-authored 6 publications and 2 patents from this work.