Our Judges

Michael Altman joined Perceptive in 2007 and is the Head of Strategy on the investment team. His focus is on medical devices, diagnostics, digital health and Specialty Pharmaceuticals. He is also a member of the investment committee for the Credit Opportunities Fund. Additionally, Michael serves as the CFO and Director of ARYA Sciences Acquisition Corp II & III. Prior to Perceptive he was a healthcare trader and analyst at First New York Securities. Michael graduated from the University of Vermont with a B.S. in Business Administration.

Based at Takeda’s Cambridge, Massachusetts, R&D campus, Christopher Arendt is responsible for oversight of Takeda’s Research and Early Development portfolio across Takeda’s core therapeutic areas of Gastroenterology and Inflammation, Oncology, and Neuroscience. Since joining Takeda in 2015, Christopher has helped reshape Takeda’s pipeline with a strong network of top-tier global collaborators, emphasizing emerging science leveraging a breadth of mechanisms and modalities, including allogenic innate immune cell therapies, antibody-targeted small molecules and oligonucleotides, and cutting-edge biologics. Christopher is a Ph.D. Immunologist who carried out postdoctoral training with Dan Littman at New York University Medical Center. Prior to joining Takeda, Christopher spent more than 13 years at Sanofi, where he led global teams advancing novel immunotherapies for cancers and inflammatory diseases.

Karen is Co-Founder and Chairman of BioCentury Inc. and was Editor in Chief from October 1992 to August 2015. She is a director at Ovid Therapeutics Inc., which is developing drugs for orphan diseases of the brain, and at Codiak Biosciences Inc., which is engineering exosomes to target new therapeutic spaces. Karen also serves on the board of trustees of the Keck Graduate Institute of the Applied Life Sciences and is a member of the board of advisors of KGI's School of Pharmacy. She serves on the Board of Overseers of Scripps Research.

Joan Eliasek is President of McKesson Canada. As a member of the McKesson Corporation’s Executive Operating Team, Joan is responsible for leading McKesson's portfolio of businesses in Canada, including pharmaceutical distribution operations, McKesson Canada Specialty Health and McKesson's network of independent pharmacies (I.D.A., Guardian, Remedy'sRx, The Medicine Shoppe, Uniprix, Proxim, e-commerce retailer Well.ca, and Rexall Pharmacy Group). Joan joined McKesson in 1995 and has held a variety of leadership roles across the company, including operations, sales, marketing and supplier management. Most recently, Joan served as Senior Vice President, Customer Experience, for McKesson’s Medical-Surgical business unit, leading operations, customer service, materials management, sales administration and data management. Prior, Joan was Senior Vice President of Extended Care Sales. Earlier in her career, Joan held multiple management positions in field operations at Baxter Healthcare Corporation. Joan has served on several boards in the healthcare industry, including Healthcare Industry Distributors Association (HIDA), HIDA Educational Foundation and Global Healthcare Exchange. She is also a long-time advisor to the Professional Women in Healthcare (PWH) board. In 2018, Joan was the first recipient of the Anne Eiting Klamar Leadership Award of Distinction by PWH. Joan received her Bachelor of Arts in Political Science and Business Administration from the University of Iowa.

Carl L. Gordon, Ph.D., CFA, is a founding Partner and Co-Head of Global Private Equity at OrbiMed.  He was a senior biotechnology analyst at Mehta and Isaly from 1995 to 1997. He was a Fellow at The Rockefeller University from 1993 to 1995. For the last five years (2014 to 2018) Forbes® Magazine named Mr. Gordon one of the top 100 venture capitalists in the world when it placed him on the "Forbes Midas List".

Mr. Purcell is the original Founder of Aisling Capital LLC and currently serves as a Senior Advisor to Aisling. Previously, he served as the Senior Managing Partner. Prior to Aisling Capital, Mr. Purcell served as Managing Director of the Life Sciences Investment Banking Group at Chase H&Q (formerly Hambrecht & Quist, “H&Q”) for over five years.

As Global Head of Johnson & Johnson Innovation, JLABS (JLABS), Melinda Richter fosters the Johnson & Johnson Family of Companies external R&D engine and supports the innovation community by creating capital-efficient commercialization models that give early stage companies a big company advantage.

Cami Samuels focuses on healthcare with an emphasis on biotech, medical devices, and consumer health. She currently serves on the board of Biolux, Corvidia, Iris, Unity (UBX), and XCaliber. Prior to Venrock, Cami was a Managing Director at Versant Ventures where she served on the board (or as a board observer) at many companies including Genomic Health (GHDX), Jazz (JAZZ), Kythera (KYTH), Novacardia (acq by Merck), and ParAllele (acq by Affymetrix). Before Versant, she was responsible for business development at Tularik (acq by Amgen). During her early career, Cami worked in corporate development at Genzyme and Millennium Predictive Medicine and was a management consultant at LEK Consulting. Cami earned her Bachelor’s degree in Biology from Duke University and an MBA from Harvard Business School, where she graduated as a Baker Scholar.