Raffi Afeyan

Raffi Afeyan is a Senior Principal at Flagship Pioneering, where he originates and builds platform companies spanning therapeutics and enabling technologies. Over more than a decade in the Flagship ecosystem, he has contributed to multiple company formations and modality-creating platforms, operating at the intersection of biology, measurement, and technology innovation. He is the Co-Founder and President a Flagship NewCo developing next-generation research instruments designed to unlock fundamentally new classes of biological data.

Raffi previously served as a founding team member and Chief Innovation Officer at Ampersand Biomedicines through 2025. He also held roles as VP of Product Strategy and Innovation at Cellarity and Generate Biomedicines, where he helped shape the translation of platform technologies into therapeutic programs currently in the clinic.

Earlier in his career, Raffi held innovation leadership roles at Axcella, contributing to the advancement of its therapeutic platform, pipeline, and ultimate IPO. He completed the Flagship Fellowship in 2014 and is an inventor on multiple patents and scientific publications.

Raffi earned his Ph.D. and M.S. in Biomedical Engineering from Boston University, where he worked with Jim Collins on engineering logic-based genetic circuits in bacteria. He holds a Bachelor of Engineering in Chemical Engineering from McGill University and serves on the Faculty Advancement Board of McGill Engineering.