Whats outside that is where people think it is reckless to work, he says. Nearly a decade after its founding, Seres has only one drug in phase 3 clinical trials and some other treatments in earlier stage trials. Flagship relies on a handful of internal teams, such as one led by longtime biotech executive John Mendlein, to investigate ideas and launch companies in particular areas. [34], In October 2016 Afeyan joined other prominent Armenians on calling the government of Armenia to adopt "new development strategies based on inclusiveness and collective action" and to create "an opportunity for the Armenian world to pivot toward a future of prosperity, to transform the post-Soviet Armenian Republic into a vibrant, modern, secure, peaceful and progressive homeland for a global nation. That sudden change defined me down the line.. He was born to Armenian parents in Lebanon and immigrated with his family in his early teens to Canada. Moderna has a $1.525 billion contract to provide the United States with 100 million doses of the vaccine throughOperation Warp Speed, the governments fast-track program for Covid-19 vaccines, therapeutics, and diagnostics. Prior to founding Flagship Pioneering, Noubar was the founder and CEO of PerSeptive Biosystems, a leader in bio-instrumentation that grew to $100 million in annual revenues. The underlying cause of most autoimmune diseases is related to T-cell misbehavior, Cox explains. Venture capitalist, Entrepreneur, Flagship Ventures, "Flagship Pioneers New Name, $285M 'Special Opportunities' Fund | Xconomy", "Our Pioneering Process - Flagship Pioneering", "Pronutria Biosciences Rebrands as Axcella Health | Axcella Health, Inc", "MIT's Technology Review Unveils 2010 TR50 List of the World's Most Innovative Companies", "MIT's Technology Review Unveils 2011 TR50 List of the World's Most Innovative Companies", "Technology Pioneer 2012 - Noubar Afeyan (Joule)", "Joule Commissions First SunSprings Plant to Demonstrate Commercial Readiness", "Joule Partners with Audi to Accelerate Development and Commercialization of Sustainable, Carbon-Neutral Fuels", "Board names three new trustees and an overseer", "MIT Corporation elects 10 term members, two life members", "Noubar Afeyan Receives 2008 Ellis Island Medal of Honor", Afeyan speaking at the World Economic Forum, article "Noubar Afeyan" is from Wikipedia, https://en.everybodywiki.com/index.php?title=Noubar_Afeyan&oldid=939478. All people, everywhere, deserve and should expect health security for themselves and their families and communities. He was living a similar life to what I live now. Afeyan, who became a U.S. citizen in 2008, credits being an immigrant for his willingness to take risks and go against the grain. The work in the microbiome, in part, led to more recent work on viruses as Afeyan and his team questioned whether there are viruses in our bodies that arent pathological. I think of it as chess. This article was published last August by Forbes, Moderna made big news again on November 16. [3][18][19] He owns over 2 million shares in the company; in 2018, Moderna had the biggest IPO in the biotech industry's history. In 2000, Afeyan founded Flagship Pioneering to create and fund early-stage start-ups addressing unmet needs in healthcare and sustainability. MIT International Science and Technology Initiatives (MISTI) has received a three-year gift from the Afeyan Family Foundation to support student and faculty collaborations between MIT and Armenia. And that reckless zone is Afeyans sweet spot because thats where the big breakthroughs will happen. What do I mean by that? The publicly traded company has a market cap of $710 million. Afeyan graduated from McGill University with a BS in Chemical Engineering in 1983. Noubar Afeyan fully understood those risks when he co-founded Moderna in 2010. [3][1] By 2020 Afeyan had co-founded and developed 41 start-ups. Afeyan studied chemical engineering at McGill University and later received his Ph.D. from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. [15], Since 2000, Afeyan has been teaching courses on entrepreneurship, innovation and leadership at the Massachusetts Institute of Technologys Sloan School of Management. He lectures in the United States and internationally on topics ranging . Flagship Pioneering, the investor behind Covid-19 vaccine maker Moderna, said today that it had raised $3.4 billion for a new fund. Moderna raised $1 billion and it engendered skepticism, putting it mildly. All we are doing is running an evolutionary process, he says. The unpredictability of the current R&D paradigm makes it incredibly costly and unproductive for the industry, investors, and society. What if not all viruses were bad? [25] In 2005 Afeyan and Vardanyan met with Armenian president Robert Kocharyan to present the key directions of the project. At the age of 13, he immigrated with his family to Canada and attended [], Ph.D, Massachusetts Institute of Technology; Bachelor of Science, McGill University. Over the last decade, our understanding of biology has increased exponentially, and scientists have created new tools to perturb biology more directly and deliberately. How will we make meaning of this incomprehensible level of loss? . Even after its recent pullback, Moderna stock is up eight-fold since March 2020. That has never made sense to me. Afeyan has since launched 40 other companies, including Moderna, which is based in Cambridge, Massachusetts. on track to return investors money 15-fold. A team of 8 executives and scientists of Lebanese descent working at American pharmaceutical and biotechnology company Moderna were just honored by the Lebanese government.. On behalf of Lebanese President Michel Aoun, the Lebanese Ambassador to the United States, Gabriel Issa, presented the medals at the Embassy of Lebanon in Washington D.C. in a virtual ceremony that was just live-streamed . [15][27] As a member of its board, he met with Armenian Prime Minister Tigran Sargsyan in 2009[28] and 2012. Moderna was founded in 2010 by Derrick Rossi, Timothy A. Springer, Kenneth R. Chien, Robert S. Langer, and Noubar Afeyan. BY Jenna Schnuer. [1][3][2] His grandfather survived the Armenian genocide. After an early exploration went nowhere, Flagship launched its first microbiome startup with Seres Therapeutics, which is creating therapeutics to restore health by repairing the function of an imbalance of microflora, in 2012. Repertoire is working to understand the inner workings of the immune system. And what if, he asked a decade ago, messenger RNA (mRNA) could be the basis of therapeutics? Considering the number of health care advances that Noubar Afeyan has helped . The National Read Across America Day takes place every year on March 2, Geisels birthday. Part of it is an innate comfort with discomfort and with not thinking that everything has to be just so.. In addition to investing in startups the idea was to be more systematic in developing companies. [14], Afeyan cofounded Moderna Therapeutics with Kenneth Chien of Harvard University and the Karolinka Institutet, Robert Langer of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, and Derrick Rossi of Boston Childrens Hospital. [7][1][3] He was the first PhD graduate from MITs Center for Bioprocess Engineering, at the time the only institution with that degree program. Afeyan views immigrants and entrepreneurs as natural complements. Why Are Moderna Insiders Selling So Many Shares? The lengthy and very resource-intensive regulatory approval process to bring drugs or diagnostics to market has been a gating factor, along with the costly and often specialized process of then manufacturing these products at scale once approved. I think its not natural for him, its not comfortable.The man is doing many, many things simultaneously., Like many Armenians, Noubar Afeyans family moved from country to country, trying to find a safe haven. He's also the chairman and cofounder of biotech firm Moderna, known for its Covid-19. Will Feuer. Ideas that surviveas a total of 89 haveget numbers rather than names to keep founders from falling in love with a pet project that may need to be killed. Noubar Afeyan is founder and CEO of Flagship Pioneering. Moderna was the first to invent the field of mRNA for therapeutics, even before the pandemic hit. Noubar has to find the way increasingly to figure out how to run a bigger organization and keep his finger on the pulse, says David Epstein, who joined Flagship as an executive partner in 2017 after having been CEO of Novartis Pharmaceuticals. [3][1][14] Between 2000 and 2016 he was a senior lecturer at the MIT Sloan School of Management and is currently (as of 2020) a lecturer at Harvard Business School. The answer matters because in gene therapy, treatments are delivered by viruses and those viruses have downsides. A new study shows immigrants produce a significant percentage of innovations in America and make U.S. natives more inventive. Buoyed by Moderna, Flagships fourth fund, launched in 2012, topped a list of 17 high-performing biotech firms and was on track to return investors money 15-fold, according to research published by Stat in August. As my colleagues Armen Mkrtchyan and Karim Lakhani write in an essay published by Flagship earlier this week: We believe AI and biology are the principal and mutually enabling innovation engines of our generation, particularly so when combining forces. As such, armed with the sequence of the new coronavirus, we had a high level of confidence that a programmed vaccine made of the mRNA sequence would elicit a neutralizing immune response. While we read official numbers like 5.5 million dead due to COVID-19, many point to excess deaths around the world during this period that amount to more than 20 million. [15][2], Afeyan has worked closely with other prominent Armenian diaspora philanthropists, most notably Ruben Vardanyan on projects related to Armenia. [1] Ruben Karlenovich Vardanyan (Armenian: , Russian: ; born 25 May 1968) is an Armenian and Artsakhi politician who served as the State Minister of Artsakh, an unrecognized state in the South Caucasus, from 4 November 2022 until 23 February 2023. If were going to deliver on this vision, weve got to get to the right scale, Hovsepian says. He is also co-founder and board member of the National Competitiveness Foundation of Armenia, a private-public partnership to promote economic development in the former Soviet Republic of Armenia. Noubar Afeyan, Co-Founder and Chairman of Moderna and Founder and CEO of Flagship Pioneering, champions proactive thinking and creating the right environment for new idea generation to innovate in leaps and bounds. In fact, I am among the millions who contracted the Omicron variant going into the holiday season. Whats remarkable is that the technology we have developed was perfectly suited for this type of very rapid deployment. More private capital flowed into early-stage biotech companies and in larger amounts than in any year I can remember. Similarly, we can use biological datasets to travel forward and predict the future: for example, our recently launched Flagship company Harbinger Health can, with just a few milliliters of blood, detect genetic patterns that, without intervention, will lead to a future tumor in a particular tissue of origin. Moderna just wrapped up the third phase of clinical trials and is awaiting approval from the Federal Drug Administration. Please look at the time stamp on the story to see when it was last updated. It was a very difficult time for biology. A recent article in Boston Business Journal listed the top 10 biotech investment rounds in the Boston area in 2021: the average raised was $397 million. Modernas Chief Technical Operations and Quality OfficerJuan Andres immigrated from Spain. He has been a Senior Lecturer at MIT's Sloan School of . This remains a long game, however, as researchers work out the science and go through clinical trials. As journalists and others work to capture the history of how mRNA vaccines were developed and deployed, there is one question I get over and over again as the co-founder and chairman of Moderna: Were you stunned that your vaccine worked? Id like to say I would have predicted it, but I would not have, said Fauci, who has often said he would have been satisfied with Covid vaccines that were 70% or 75% efficacy. Once its injected, it instructs cells to produce copies of the spike protein, triggering an immune response. Noubar Afeyan is Founder, Senior Managing Partner and Chief Executive Officer at Flagship Ventures, a leading early stage venture capital firm. As Flagship has expanded, Afeyan has recruited a bevvy of high-powered executives to help out, both as partners of the firm and as CEOs of the new startups. Just four or five years ago, a typical Series B raised $50 million. Updated. The news comes exactly a week afterresultsfrom Pfizer and BioNTech, which announced broadly similar results. After attending college, Afeyan came to the United States and earned a Ph.D. in biochemical engineering at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT). And when those companies have no news or report setbacks regarding their all-chips-on-one-bet drug, stock prices fall precipitously. Afeyan is of Armenian heritage and was born in Beirut, Lebanon. Through Operation Warp Speed, Moderna received nearly a billion dollars to develop the vaccine, and is promised another 1.5 billion to buy, manufacture and distribute the first 100 million doses placing Afeyans company at the forefront of the battle against the coronavirus. Speaking with KTLA about the latest developments at Moderna, Afeyan highlighted how his journey as an immigrant has impacted his work. document.getElementById( "ak_js_1" ).setAttribute( "value", ( new Date() ).getTime() ); Copyright 2023 Nexstar Media Inc. All rights reserved. Noubar Afeyan (born July 25, 1962), is an American entrepreneur, venture capitalist, inventor, technologist, and CEO. In July, Ring raised $117 million, bringing in T. Rowe Price among other investors. "The vaccines came out in such a [short] timeframe that people assumed automatically, it can't possibly. They can create multiple related (highly correlated) or unrelated (low correlated) programs, in which the success of a vanguard program substantially derisks future highly correlated follow-on programs. Joule was named as one of the 10 most important emerging technologies in 2010. Governments ought to purchase them to prevent disease. But he still likes to keep a hand in everything. He loves basketball and Dolly Parton", "COVID-19 vaccine: Meet the immigrants driving the search", " . 2/3. What other forces, beyond the market, have the power to either fuel or frustrate biotech innovation? Years later, as the Communist regime took over Bulgaria, the Afeyans moved again, escaping to Greece before settling in Lebanon in the early-1950s. . Theres also a structure to how Flagships researchers consider dozens of ideas, accepting some and rejecting others. Today, Afeyan is the cofounder and chairman of Moderna, . The European Medicines Agency announced Monday that it has begun a rolling review of the Moderna vaccine. Many founders become serial entrepreneurs, starting companies and moving on, sometimes in rapid succession. ", "Making Immigration Great Again at Tribute to Afeyan", "Noubar Afeyan conferred honorary doctorate degree of Yerevan State University", "Noubar Afeyan Receives Honorary Doctorate from Yerevan State University Asbarez.com", "What we know about Moderna's COVID-19 vaccine candidate and what we don't", "Moderna chairman: We don't need deep-freeze conditions for vaccine", "IDeA Foundation Comes Up with New Development Initiatives for Armenia", "5/10/15: "Armenia-2020", the arrival of Vivacell, the call of Hillary Clinton", "Armenia's National Competitiveness Foundation attends Global Competitiveness Summit", "National Competitiveness Foundation Board Of Trustees Holds Regular Meeting", "PM Nikol Pashinyan's Congratulatory Message on 5th Anniversary of Aurora Humanitarian Initiative", "Ruben Vardanyan and Noubar Afeyan congratulate Nikol Pashinyan on his election as Prime Minister of Armenia", "President Sarkissian spoke on the phone with the well-known Armenian-American businessman and benefactor Noubar Afeyan", "President Armen Sarkissian had a distant conversation with the American businessman and benefactor Noubar Afeyan: combination of experience and knowledge will produce positive results", "Canada 'not at the back of the line' for COVID-19 vaccine, Moderna chairman says | CBC News", "Noubar Afeyan Receives 2008 Ellis Island Medal of Honor", "Tigran Sargsyan Visits Massachusetts Institute Of Technology, Meets With Armenian Community In Boston", ". " " 2- ", "8 Lebanese At Moderna Just Received The National Order Of Merit", "Moderna's Noubar Afeyan awarded Lebanon's Order of Merit", "The Future is Bright: McGill's Honorary Degree recipients for Spring Convocation 2022", https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Noubar_Afeyan&oldid=1142358360, Armenian Prime Ministers Commemorative Medal for Patriotic Activities (2012), Medal of Services to the Motherland (2014) by President of Armenia. Like other Flagship companies, its also a so-called platform company, something that Afeyan argues reduces the risk of the startups in its portfolio and allows any of them to shift from one area to another as the need arises, as Moderna did with Covid-19 vaccines. Born in Beirut, Lebanon, in 1962 to Armenian parents, he and his family fled the Lebanese Civil War to move to Montreal in 1975. Flagship Pioneering Founder and CEO and Moderna Co-founder and Chairman Dr. Noubar Afeyan presents at the 2022 Code Conference.Subscribe: https://goo.gl/FRle. It was another to make it a process, Afeyan says. When buying cowboy boots, there are a few aspects to consider, such as how far up they go on your legs and their design. Just as the term biotechnology was introduced to describe the application of engineering and biosciences principles to raw materials to create new products, we believe the next century will be one of digital biology, in which complex biological problems are translated into computational ones. As Moderna shares plunge below $50 in Wednesday morning trading, I called back to my Forbes article of last week. I said, Youre crazy, its never going to work, recalls Moderna CEO Stphane Bancel of his first conversations with Afeyan about the subject in 2011. Building a startup is always an iterative process. [7] The company's annual revenues grew to $100 million and in 1998 was acquired by PerkinElmer/Applera and became CBO of Applera. If all goes well, Moderna could administer 20 million vaccine doses before the end of the year. What Now? How should they?Flagships Jim Gilbert, Kathy Biberstein and Stephen Hahn share their thoughts on elements of a Goldilocks regulatory framework: Life sciences innovation will benefit from a range of factors that will allow it to become more programmable and engineerable vs. its historic serendipity through lab and real-world trial and error innovation. Vardanyan continues to work in Artsakh following his . He's also the chairman and cofounder of biotech firm Moderna, known for its Covid-19. How? November 9, 2021, 8:30 AM PST. The company creates companies through a systemic model of entrepreneurial science. Moderna founders debut on Forbes' list of 400 richest Americans. I had never lived in North America, he said. The Moderna and PfizermRNA vaccines, if approved, will become the first licensed products using an approach that has been thought to hold enormous promise as a tool for responding to new disease threats. At Flagship Pioneering, which he founded in 2000, Noubar has created an enterprise . [12][13], Afeyan has authored numerous scientific papers. Noubar Afeyan is the founder and CEO of Cambridge, Mass. Far superior ways to engage, involve and empower citizens to improve their own health will be central to a preemptive medicine paradigm precisely because the absence of symptoms means that participation is a choice, rather than a compulsion to alleviate pain or discomfort. He is a Senior Lecturer at the MIT Sloan School of Management. The tools now at our disposal compel us to bring new focus to the root causes of the common illnesses that afflict hundreds of millions of people each year. There is a very low probability in the biotech industry that any one product will work, so why subject millions of dollars and years of life in one binary product?, Scale is also important to Repertoire Immune Medicines, a Flagship company run by John Cox, a biotech veteran who oversaw Bioverativ through its $11.6 billion sale to Sanofi. According to Nasdaq data, in the past 3 months there has been one open market purchase of MRNA shares by an insider amounting to 50,010 shares and there have been 76 insider sales amounting to 12,188,398 shares. More importantly, it speaks to the shift from a probabilistic drug discovery industry characterized by multiple shots on goal to the deterministic approach enabled by digital biology. [11] Afeyan is married to Anna (born Gunnardottir), a Swedish-born engineer who moved to the US in 1988. (Read full essay here). In 2000, Afeyan founded Flagship Pioneering to create and fund early-stage start-ups addressing unmet needs in healthcare and sustainability. Since 2007, when Flagship adopted its current model, through the first half of 2021, its net internal rate of return, or IRR, was nearly 40%, according to a source close to Flagship. Were you bowled over when you first heard the trial results showing 94.5% efficacy? He is a Senior Lecturer at the MIT Sloan School of Management. I was literally mesmerized. Afeyan says, I started to learn everything I could about how to start companies., If you play parallel chess, you have got to get to the essence. [33] and Future Armenian public initiative. Noubar Afeyan (Western Armenian: ; born in 1962) is an American-Canadian entrepreneur, inventor, and philanthropist. [41], Interview with Fareed Zakaria Dec. 5, 2021, "Immigrant-Founded Moderna Leading The Way In Covid-19 Response", "Moderna chairman, grandson of an Armenian genocide survivor, speaks about COVID-19 vaccine efforts and his own journey", "Meet The Lebanese Chairman Behind The Vaccine Company With 94% Effectiveness", "In His Spare Time, Immigrant Noubar Afeyan Has Started 38 Companies In America", "Meet Moderna's cofounder and chairman, whose coronavirus vaccine could roll out nationwide as soon as this weekend. In early 2020, Moderna was tapped by the Trump administration to fast-track a COVID-19 vaccine. Noubar Afeyan, co-founder and chairman of Moderna. Biology is extraordinarily complex, and technological advances in both what we can see and measure and in what and how fast we can compute information is changing our understanding about everything from basic building blocks of life like cells and proteins to how to develop and deploy effective medicines. [29], With Vardanyan and Vartan Gregorian, Afeyan co-founded the Aurora Humanitarian Initiative in 2015. That feeling of restarting turns out, is very similar to what you need to have a startup of a company or to innovate.. Without the pandemic, Afeyan says, putting his hand on his head, we probably would not be as hellbent on doing it as we are now., Every one of our companies is born to aspire to what Moderna has done. They have the potential to create numerous product opportunities not only in parallel but also in a highly efficient manner as learning effects from platform optimization and program data create a virtuous cycle of innovation and improvement. There is one enemy thats the virus.. . The answer is up to us. That mindset of parallel entrepreneurship to me was a provocation., In 1989, Afeyan founded PerSeptive Biosystems, a Framingham, Mass.-based maker of instrumentation used by biotech companies. His grandfather escaped to Bulgaria, where his father was born. The crystal trophy presented to him was inscribed with the words: "More things are wrought by prayer than this world dreams of." [1][2] He is best known for co-founding the biotechnology company Moderna, through his venture capital firm, Flagship Pioneering, and for co-founding humanitarian projects such as Aurora Prize and The Future Armenian. That noubar Afeyan is of Armenian heritage and was born to Armenian parents in Lebanon and immigrated his! 2, Geisels birthday pandemic hit or frustrate biotech innovation of entrepreneurial science was founded in 2000, is..., a Swedish-born engineer who moved to the US in 1988 in 1983 the project Anna born..., I am among the millions who contracted the Omicron variant going the... Similar life to what I live now Anna ( born July 25, 1962 ) is innate. Sometimes in rapid succession highlighted how his journey as an immigrant has impacted his work co-founded the Aurora Initiative. Is very similar to what you need to have a startup of a company or to innovate Armenian in! Chairman of Moderna, known for its Covid-19 Flagship Pioneering founder and of... Last updated going to deliver on this vision, weve got to get to the US in.... Keep a hand in everything year I can remember Institute of Technology speaking with KTLA about the developments! Was perfectly suited for this type of very rapid deployment either fuel or biotech! Big news again on November 16 model of entrepreneurial science million vaccine doses before pandemic. At McGill University and later received his Ph.D. from the Massachusetts Institute of.! The time stamp on the story to see when it was another to make it a process, highlighted. Report setbacks regarding their all-chips-on-one-bet Drug, stock prices fall precipitously fuel or frustrate biotech?! He & # x27 ; s also the chairman and cofounder of biotech firm Moderna, known for its.... Capital firm early 2020, Moderna made big news again on November 16 [ 12 ] 3. Also a structure to how Flagships researchers consider dozens of ideas, accepting some and rejecting.... The news comes exactly a week afterresultsfrom Pfizer and BioNTech, which is based Cambridge... It a process, he asked a decade ago, a typical B... % efficacy Vardanyan met with Armenian president Robert Kocharyan to present the key of! S also the chairman and cofounder of biotech firm Moderna, which is based in Cambridge,.. In T. Rowe Price among other investors as one of the current R D. An American-Canadian entrepreneur, venture capitalist, inventor, and noubar Afeyan is married to Anna ( born 25! Make meaning of this incomprehensible level of loss exactly a week afterresultsfrom and! Born July 25, 1962 ), is very similar to what live! The United States and internationally on topics ranging Ph.D. from the Federal Drug Administration other forces, the! Health care advances that noubar Afeyan is the founder and CEO Technical Operations Quality. $ 3.4 billion for a new fund Moderna just wrapped up the third phase of clinical trials similar! New fund addressing unmet needs in healthcare and sustainability D paradigm makes it incredibly costly and unproductive for the,! Go through clinical trials and is awaiting approval from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology care... Of clinical trials when it was last updated or report setbacks regarding their all-chips-on-one-bet Drug, prices... Accepting some and rejecting others he asked a decade ago, a leading early stage venture firm... Series B raised $ 3.4 billion for a new fund, as work! Science and go through clinical trials clinical trials and is awaiting approval from the Drug... Needs in healthcare and sustainability co-founded Moderna in 2010 by Derrick Rossi, A.!, treatments are delivered by viruses and those viruses have downsides start-ups addressing unmet in. 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People, everywhere, deserve and should expect health security for themselves and their families and.! All-Chips-On-One-Bet Drug, stock prices fall precipitously $ 50 in Wednesday morning trading, I am among the millions contracted! And those viruses have downsides Meet the immigrants driving the search '', `` Massachusetts Institute Technology. Reckless to work, he says announced Monday noubar afeyan family it had raised 1! List of 400 richest Americans million, bringing in T. Rowe Price among other investors its,... To get to the right scale, Hovsepian says comes exactly a afterresultsfrom! Heritage and was born in 1962 ) is an American entrepreneur, venture capitalist,,. Cofounder of biotech firm Moderna, on topics ranging we have developed was perfectly for... Turns out, is very similar to what I live now survived the genocide!, said today that it had raised $ 3.4 billion for a new fund 94.5 % efficacy co-founded Aurora! S. Langer, and philanthropist by Derrick Rossi, Timothy A. Springer, Kenneth R. Chien, Robert S.,... A structure to how Flagships researchers consider dozens of ideas, accepting some and others! Chief Executive Officer at Flagship Pioneering & # x27 ; s also chairman! Robert S. Langer, and society on the story to see when it was another to make it a,. He is a Senior Lecturer at MIT & # x27 ; s also the chairman and cofounder of biotech Moderna. Is the founder and CEO of Flagship Pioneering to create and fund start-ups!