Fauad Hassan

With background in chemical engineering, Fauad comes with more than 22 years of experience in various leadership roles in the Biopharmaceutical industry. Currently, he is serving as an executive, board member, advisor, and investor for various organization and companies with the focus on digital health/AI, medical devices, and biopharmaceuticals. This includes, Ornovi, a biopharma start-up focusing on auto-immune conditions, where Fauad serves as the Chairman and CEO. Recently, as the Chairman of the board at Attillaps Pharmaceuticals, he was instrumental in securing a licensing deal with Glaukos (NYSE:GKOS) related to ophthalmic applications in September 2021 for undisclosed terms. Previously, Fauad was the Co-Founder, President and CEO of Bonti, which was acquired by Allergan (now Abbvie – NASDAQ:ABBV) in October 2018 for the upfront payment of $195 million and significant subsequent milestone payments. His vision and leaderships, along with deploying a capital efficient and lean model, was key to Bonti’s fast progress in a very short time. Prior to that, he served in various leadership roles at Allergan, including Global Product Development teams of top tier neurotoxin and ocular programs (including >$4 billion revenue drug Botox®), establishing overall drug development strategy from discovery to commercialization.

Fauad started his career as a scientist at Regeneron (NASDAQ:REGN), where he was part of the R&D team that developed various therapeutic drugs, including a $8.5 billion revenue ophthalmology drug, Eylea®. He moved on to Baxter Bioscience (now Takeda – NYSE:TAK) working in roles of increasing responsibilities in the areas of drug development, engineering, and manufacturing, catering to both internal (including anti-hemophilic FVIII products) and external biologics programs. Fauad is also one of the inventors of Single-use bioreactor (SUB), used in the manufacturing of biologic drugs, with several patents related to the single-use technology. He also has patents related to drug development in various fields and has authored research articles in peered reviewed academic journals and chapters for scientific books.

Growing up in Silicon Valley, Fauad learned leadership skills at an early age through competitive sports. He won several awards playing squash and cricket at regional and national level and has represented United States National Cricket team in international competitions. In his spare time, he coaches his twins’ youth baseball team and does charity work through his family foundation.