Irene Rombel

Co-Founder and CEO at BioCurie

Speaker

Dr. Irene Rombel is the CEO, President, and Co-Founder of BioCurie, a TechBio company located in Cambridge, MA, and the greater Philadelphia region. BioCurie is pioneering mechanistic artificial intelligence (mAI) to transform the development and manufacturing of cell, gene and nucleic acid therapies. Dr. Rombel is the Principal Investigator on an ARPA-H Award to BioCurie, ENGINE: Scalable AI-Driven Solutions for Gene Therapy Production.

Irene is an industry veteran with 25+ years of leadership experience in science and business, spanning biotechnology, big pharma, consulting, investing, and academia. Prior to founding BioCurie, she held leadership roles at Spark Therapeutics and Johnson & Johnson; was Founder and President of Biomedical Intelligence LLC, a life science consulting company; and a biotechnology investment analyst.

Dr. Rombel started her career in academia as an Assistant Professor at UT Southwestern Medical Center, Dallas, in the Center for Biomedical Inventions, leading research on DNA vaccines, synthetic biology, and cell-specific targeting. Her postdoctoral research on transcriptional regulation at UC Berkeley and UC Davis made fundamental scientific contributions to the understanding of promoter-enhancer control of gene expression.

Irene received her Ph.D. in Biochemistry and B.Sc. (First Class Honours) in Biochemistry from the University of Otago, New Zealand, and her MBA from Southern Methodist University, Dallas, Texas. Irene is also a registered U.S. Patent Agent. She serves on the Board of the Alliance of mRNA Medicines and the Columbia University Irving Cancer Drug Discovery Advisory Board.