Team

Dr. Aaron Cravens
Co-Founder & CEO
Dr. Kevin Desai
Head of Protein Engineering
Dr. John Paderi
Clinical Translation
Narisa Trabosh
Associate Scientist
Anika Schmidt
Research Associate II
Dr. Dennis Boyle
CMC Lead
Dr. Charles Hespen
Scientist II
Samantha Hedley
Research Associate I
Advisory Board
Kenneth I. Moch
Scientific & Business Advisor
Dr. Vincent Monnier
Scientific Advisor
Dr. Jason Crawford
Co-Founder & Scientific Advisor
Dr. Gjalt Huisman
Scientific Advisor
Board of Directors
Dr. Jennifer Cochran
Independent Board Member
Patrick Burgermeister
Board Member & Partner at at Kizoo Technology Capital
Dr. Aaron Cravens
Co-Founder & CEO
Dr. Aaron Cravens

Aaron co-founded Revel in 2019 inspired by the potential impact anti-AGE therapeutics could have on patients. He is thrilled to lead development of the team and technology that will take anti-AGE therapeutics into the clinic. Before Revel, Aaron worked at Google X and consulted for Bay Area biotech companies, where he developed operational and leadership experience. He previously founded a startup in the skincare space and trained in Stanford’s IGNITE Business School Program. Aaron has over eight years of experience in Revel’s platform technologies of enzyme discovery and engineering. Aaron earned his BS in Mathematics from the University of Rochester and his PhD in Bioengineering from Stanford University, advised by Dr. Christina Smolke.

Dr. Kevin Desai

Kevin joined Revel in the middle of 2021 as Revel’s Head of Protein Engineering. Kevin brings over 15 years worth of experience in enzyme discovery and engineering. He believes in the potential of enzymes as novel therapeutics and is excited to lead the development of Revel’s enzyme engineering efforts. Prior to joining Revel, Kevin developed an enzyme engineering program to evolve proteases for applications in next-generation protein sequencing technologies. Kevin completed his Ph.D. in Biochemistry at Florida State University where he discovered and characterized several novel enzymes in bacteria. He finished postdoctoral studies in the Department of Biochemistry at the University of Wisconsin–Madison where he received a National Institutes of Health Postdoctoral Fellowship to study RNA-modifying enzymes.

Dr. John Paderi

John joined Revel at the beginning of 2020 as a clinical development consultant. John is a biopharma leader and entrepreneur skilled at discovering and translating early scientific research into high-value clinical solutions to unmet medical needs. His scientific background and research efforts traverse biology and materials engineering and have impact across clinical broad indication areas including cardiovascular, musculoskeletal, dermal, neurological, ophthalmic, renal, hepatic, and infectious diseases. He has translated basic science research using chemistry approaches to exploit biological polymeric materials into clinical drugs for cardiovascular disease and osteoarthritis, developed within the start-up, Symic Bio, which raised more than $80M before partnering these drugs. John has also translated medical device approaches to address clinical needs, including the discovery and innovation of peripheral neurostimulation to treat the neurological disorder, essential tremor, which was developed and commercialized by Cala Health.

Kenneth I. Moch

Kenneth Moch has broad expertise building, financing and leading private and public life science companies. Ken has served as president and CEO of four life science companies: Chimerix, Inc., an antiviral therapeutics company; BioMedical Enterprises (acquired by DePuy, a Johnson & Johnson company); Alteon, Inc., a developer of therapeutics for cardiovascular aging and diabetic complications; and Biocyte Corporation, where he pioneered the storage and therapeutic use of cord blood stem cells and launched the first cord blood stem cell storage bank.

Mr. Moch started his career in biotech drug development as a co-founder and vice president of The Liposome Company, Inc. (acquired by Elan Corporation). He has also been a managing partner of The Salutramed Group, LLC, a managing director of Healthcare Investment Banking at ThinkEquity Partners and a management consultant with McKinsey & Company, Inc.

Mr. Moch holds an MBA from the Stanford University Graduate School of Business.

Dr. Vincent Monnier

Dr. Monnier has 48-years of expertise as a clinical pathologist, in which he studied the Maillard reaction, Advanced Glycation End Products (AGEs) and how they relate to aging and complications of diabetes. Dr. Monnier identified glucosepane as one of the most significant AGEs to accumulate during human aging.

Dr. Monnier obtained a medical degree and diploma in Chemistry from the University of Basel, Switzerland and from 1977-82, did postdoctoral research on the advanced Maillard reaction in vivo with Anthony Cerami, Ph.D. at Rockefeller University (New York, NY).

Dr. Jason Crawford

Dr. Crawford is a Professor of Chemistry and Microbial Pathogenesis at Yale, where he has led the Crawford group in exploiting natural systems for antibiotic and enzyme discovery. He carried out his doctoral research at the Johns Hopkins University with Craig A. Townsend and his postdoctoral work at Harvard Medical School with Jon Clardy. At Harvard, Jason focused on bioactive small molecule discovery, bacterial microbiology, and genetics in the context of biosynthetic gene clusters governing interactions between bacteria and animals. Jason made small molecule-guided methodological advancements in culturing previously uncultured bacteria and in stimulating novel antibiotic production in a multipartite symbiosis, consisting of bacteria, nematodes, and insects.

Dr. Jennifer Cochran

Dr. Cochran has co-founded several biotechnology companies including the xCella Biosciences which develops antibody therapeutics, and is a Venture Partner at Lagunita Biosciences. Since 2008, she has served as a Professor of Bioengineering at Stanford University, and is presently Shriram Chair of Bioengineering at Stanford University. She also serves as the Director of the Stanford/NIH Biotechnology predoctoral training program. Her expertise spans protein-based drug discovery and development for applications in oncology, regenerative medicine, and ophthalmology, and development of new technology for high-throughput protein analysis and engineering. Dr. Cochran obtained her Ph.D. in Biological Chemistry from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, where she also completed a postdoctoral fellowship in Biological Engineering. She has received numerous accolades for her work including the National Cancer Institute Howard Temin Award, and an American Cancer Society Research Scholar Award. Dr. Cochran has published over 75 papers in peer-reviewed journals and is named as an inventor on over 35 patent applications.

Patrick Burgermeister

Patrick has a strong operational background in Venture Capital, pharma, banking and medtech. He joined Kizoo as Partner in 2019, coming from the Venture Capital group BioMedPartners (Basel, Switzerland) where he was one of the partners and supported various biotech companies as a director on their boards. Before BioMedPartners, he was Senior Portfolio Manager of project management at Novartis Pharma. There, he was responsible for the evaluation and prioritization of development projects from preclinical to registration stage. Prior to Novartis, he was Senior Financial Analyst responsible for the European Biotech and Pharma sector at Zürcher Kantonalbank. In addition, he served as advisor to the healthcare fund Pharma Vision, worked as strategic planning manager at Jomed AG (now Abbott Vascular) and led business development at a variety of early-stage biotech companies including Apeiron Biologics (Vienna, Austria) and at BioVersys AG (Basel, Switzerland). Patrick holds a Master’s degree in Molecular Biology from the University of Basel (Biozentrum), a Master’s degree in Business Administration from the University of St. Gallen (HSG) and a degree as Chartered Financial Analyst (CFA).

Shreya Nagdev

Shreya joined Revel in the summer of 2022 as a Research Associate. She has a B.A. in Chemistry with an emphasis in Biochemistry from Macalester College. At Macalester, Shreya worked on Zinc-finger binding interactions with Cu(I) as well as artificial metalloenzyme development for peroxidase reactions. She is excited to return to the Bay area to work on developing novel enzyme therapeutics.

Narisa Trabosh

Narisa joined Revel in the summer of 2022 as a Research Associate. She has three years of protein engineering experience in the Mendoza Lab at the University of Chicago developing engineered cytokines. She is excited to make the shift into enzyme engineering. Narisa received a B.S. in Molecular Engineering, Bioengineering track and a B.A. in Biology from the University of Chicago.

Anika Schmidt

Anika joined Revel in the summer of 2022 as a Research Associate. She has a B.S. in Microbiology from Cal Poly San Luis Obispo. During her time at Cal Poly, she performed research in the Chemistry, Biological Sciences, and Biomedical Engineering departments. Her projects focused on the optimization of an alkoxyamine cyclic molecule’s synthesis, researching antibiotic resistance, and performing biocompatibility testing of biocontainers for use in cell therapies. She is excited to apply the knowledge she has gained in these subjects to the discovery of new enzyme therapeutics.

Dr. Gjalt Huisman

Dr. Gjalt Huisman joins the Revel Pharmaceuticals Scientific Advisory Board with over 25 years of experience in industrial biotechnology. Gjalt was a founding scientist of Codexis (2002), the premier enzyme engineering company. He is a 20-year veteran in the application of Directed Evolution technologies, previously joined Codexis’ mother company Maxygen in 1998 and since then had leadership roles in various internal and collaborative programs. In 2013 he founded Codexis’ Biotherapeutics group which discovered CDX-6114 for treatment of Phenylketonuria. He is the co-inventor of more than 50 patents. Earlier in his career, Gjalt was a founding scientist at Metabolix. A native of the Netherlands, Dr. Huisman received his PhD from the University of Groningen, and performed post-doctoral studies at Harvard Medical School.

Dr. Dennis Boyle

Denis has led protein therapeutic development teams for Pfizer and other companies spanning nearly 20 years, and includes 4 years leading the successful introduction of several validated GMP animal health vaccines. He has a detailed knowledge of the CMC milestones on the path to Regulatory approval, including alignment with clinical studies outcomes. Having worked extensively with third party organizations at various stages of development and testing, his knowledge of the drug development process, CMC strategy, quality management systems and business priorities during outsourcing of product candidate technologies and services was essential for product progression. He has directed upstream microbial and mammalian production technology teams using stainless steel and single use bioreactors, is recognized as a downstream bioprocess expert, and personally directed the successful tech transfer and scale up to pilot and GMP commercial scale of over 12 protein products.

Dr. Charles Hespen

Charles joined Revel in 2023 as Scientist II. Charles brings over a decade of experience in biochemistry and enzymology to the team. He is excited to develop therapeutic enzymes capable of reversing some of the damaging molecular changes that occur in aging and disease. Prior to joining Revel, Charles finished postdoctoral studies in the lab of Dr. Howard Hang at Rockefeller University, where he led mechanistic and structural studies of the innate immune receptor NOD2. Charles completed his Ph.D. in Molecular and Cell Biology at University of California, Berkeley in the laboratory of Dr. Michael Marletta. He is the recipient of several prestigious awards including the NIH Ruth L. Kirschstein Postdoctoral and Predoctoral Fellowships.

Samantha Hedley

Sam joined Revel in the summer of 2023 as a Research Associate. She received a B.A. in Biochemistry from Dartmouth College. At Dartmouth, she worked in the Ragusa Lab and completed an honors thesis on optimizing the purification of transmembrane autophagy proteins. She also has experience in enzyme kinetics and is excited to apply it to the field of enzyme engineering.