Avak Kahvejian

Avak Kahvejian, Ph.D. is a life sciences inventor and entrepreneur. As President of Flagship Labs, Flagship Pioneering’s innovation engine, Avak leads multidisciplinary teams that originate, test, and scale breakthrough scientific ideas with the potential to transform human health and sustainability, spanning AI-based biology platforms, generative AI platforms for multiple therapeutic modalities, first-in-kind gene and cell therapies, and high-throughput enabling technologies.

Since joining Flagship in 2011, he has co-founded more than ten high-value public and private companies, including Seres Therapeutics (NASDAQ: MCRB), Ring Therapeutics, Cellarity, Sail Biomedicines, Generate:Biomedicines, ProFound Therapeutics, Ampersand Biomedicines, Abiologics, Etiome, Rubius Therapeutics, and Codiak BioSciences. Avak has served as founding President and CEO of Rubius Therapeutics, co-CEO of Generate Biomedicines, and founding CEO of several Flagship-founded companies, including Cellarity, Laronde, Ring, ProFound, Ampersand, Abiologics, and Etiome. He currently serves on the boards of Cellarity, Sail, Ring, and Etiome, and is Chairman of Ampersand, ProFound, and Abiologics.

Prior to joining Flagship, Avak was Vice President of Business Development at Helicos BioSciences, where he helped develop and commercialize the world’s first single-molecule DNA sequencing technology.

Avak currently serves as Chairman of the Board of the International Institute of New England, an institution which creates opportunities for refugees and immigrants to succeed through resettlement, education, career advancement and pathways to citizenship. He is also on the Board of Genome Canada, the Advisory Board of the Foundation for Armenian Science and Technology (FAST), and the McGill University Regional Advisory Board US.

He earned his Ph.D. and B.Sc. in Biochemistry from McGill University in Montreal, Canada.