About Inflammatix
our mission
Inflammatix brings precision medicine to acute care
Inflammatix strives to provide best-in-class host response diagnostics to address significant unmet needs in hospital care, starting in the emergency department.
Precision medicine on demand
There is a critical unmet need for quickly and accurately characterizing infections in patients who are acutely ill. Our expert bioinformatics and assay development teams are building a host-response-based diagnostics pipeline that includes tests for acute infection and sepsis, emerging infectious diseases, autoimmune diseases, tropical infections, transplant rejection, and other conditions.
We are initially focused on developing tests for acute bacterial infections, viral infections, and sepsis based on patent-pending biomarkers exclusively licensed from Stanford University.
Our products are in development, are not for sale, and do not have marketing approval or clearance from regulatory authorities in any jurisdiction.
Leadership
Tim Sweeney, MD, PhD
Co-Founder and CEO
Jonathan Romanowsky
Co-Founder and Chief Business Officer
Purvesh Khatri, PhD
Co-Founder and Chief Scienist
Oliver Liesenfeld, MD
Chief Medical Officer
Joao Fonseca, PhD
Chief Technology Officer
Ashley Prasse Miller
Vice President of Clinical Operations and Biometrics
Christopher MacGriff, PhD
Vice President of Strategy and Corporate Development
Diana Lane
Vice President of Quality Assurance and Regulatory Affairs
Jerry Ceglia
Vice President of Operations and Finance
Ljubomir Buturovic, PhD
Vice President of Machine Learning
Paul Fleming, PhD
Vice President of Engineering and Program Management
Tawny Darling
Vice President of People Operations
Board of Directors
Tim Sweeney, MD, PhD
Co-Founder and CEO
Jonathan Romanowsky
Co-Founder and Chief Business Officer
Steve Tablak
Former Chairman and CEO, GeneWeave
David Persing, MD, PhD
EVP/Chief Medical Officer, Cepheid
Ingo Chakravarty
Operating Partner, Northpond Ventures
Heiner Dreismann, PhD
Former CEO, Roche Molecular Systems
Florian Kainzinger, PhD
Founder, Think.Health Ventures
Advisors
Ken Bahk, PhD
CEO of Lakewood Holdings
Nathan A Ledeboer
Professor and Vice Chair of Pathology
Jim Ducharme
Clinical Professor of Medicine
Laura L. Adams
Special Advisor at the National Academy of Medicine (NAM)
Mario Torres
Diagnostic device and molecular diagnostics testing
In Memorium
In memory of our valued scientific advisory board member and close friend
Hector Wong, MD
Professor of Pediatrics
Investors
Inflammatix investors include the following groups:
Inflammatix projects have been funded in whole or in part with federal funds from the Department of Health and Human Services; Office of the Assistant Secretary for Preparedness and Response; Biomedical Advanced Research and Development Authority, under Contract No. 75A50119C00034.
Awards
Inflammatix is recognized for our accomplishments and promise
2024 Congressional Innovation Showcase on Intersection between AI and Health Equity
2023 FDA Breakthrough Device Designation
2021 SCCM Gold Snapshot Award for the 50th Critical Care Congress
Tracxn Emerging Startups 2021: Top Diagnostics Tech Startups
2020 MedTech Innovator Top 50 Medtech Startups
2019 FierceMedTech Fierce 15 Company
2019 AACC Disruptive Technology and Audience Choice Awards
2017 ISF Best Clinical Abstract Award
Certificates
ISO 13485:2016 Certificate
CDC Permit to Infectious Biological Agents, Infectious Substances, and Vectors (COVID)
California Medical Device Manufacturing License
Santa Clara County Environmental Health Permit
CDC Permit to Infectious Biological Agents, Infectious Substances, and Vectors
Sunnyvale Hazardous Materials Permit
Tim Sweeney, MD, PhD
Dr. Sweeney helped invent the core Inflammatix technology and is a licensed physician and data scientist. He completed his MD/PhD at Duke University, and then spent time training in the general surgery residency program at Stanford University. While training as a surgeon, he became frustrated with the current diagnostic tools for infection. During his residency research years, he completed a postdoc MS in Biomedical Informatics, during which he worked with Dr. Khatri to identify a new way to diagnose infections based on ‘reading’ the immune system. Their work designing custom informatics algorithms for sifting through heterogeneous large datasets led to the core technology on which Inflammatix is based.
Jonathan Romanowsky
Mr. Romanowsky has over 15 years of novel, high-value molecular diagnostics commercialization experience. Jonathan is driven by the incredible impact that diagnostics can provide dedicated healthcare professionals to improve patient care while providing significant value to public and private payers paying for it. He has served in commercial leadership roles at Telomere Diagnostics, Veracyte, CardioDx and CareDx. He has successfully brought product concepts through launch and to achieve standard-of-care status. He has led numerous commercialization efforts in product management, marketing, operations, reimbursement and sales in the United States and abroad. Previously, Jonathan pioneered electronic prescribing at iScribe (now part of CVS) and was a business strategy consultant for Bain & Company. Jonathan earned his Bachelor of Science in Political Economy from the University of California, Berkeley and his MBA from Stanford University, focusing on medical technology innovation.
Purvesh Khatri, PhD
Dr. Khatri possesses more than 15 years of experience in bioinformatics, computational biology, and translational medicine. He is well-known for his work on ontological and pathway analysis of high-throughput molecular, genomics, and proteomics data. Dr. Khatri developed the first ontology tool for analysis of microarray data, named Onto-Express, and has expanded into a suite of web-based open access tools, Onto-Tools.
His most recent work focused on developing computational methods for integrated, multi-cohort analysis of publicly available data to increase sample size, as well as better account for the heterogeneity observed in real world patient populations. Using these methods, he has identified highly specific and sensitive biomarkers for: (1) infectious diseases (sepsis, respiratory infections, tuberculosis), (2) acute solid-organ transplant rejection, and (3) cancer (pancreatic cancer, small cell and non-small cell lung cancer, mesothelioma). Dr. Khatri has authored or co-authored more than 140 papers and holds 30-plus patents.
Oliver Liesenfeld, MD
Dr. Liesenfeld is an expert in the field of microbiology, infectious diseases and the host response. He has over 25 years of industry and academic experience in the diagnostics field, with a focus on molecular diagnostics and infectious diseases. As chief medical officer at Roche Molecular Diagnostics, he built a state-of-the-art medical department and led the company’s clinical science, medical affairs, clinical operations and biometrics functions. His team designed and executed numerous clinical trials to support regulatory approvals and commercialization of the company’s broad product portfolio, including the LightCycler® SeptiFast test for use in sepsis diagnosis.
Dr. Liesenfeld previously served as associate professor of Medical Microbiology and Infection Immunology at the Charite Medical School in Berlin, Germany, where his research focused on the immune response to infections. He holds an MD and a doctoral (Dr. med) degree from the Free University of Berlin, Germany and completed his residency in medical microbiology and infection epidemiology at the Charite Medical School, Berlin. He also completed a postdoctoral fellowship in the Division of Infectious Diseases and Geographic Medicine at Stanford University. Dr. Liesenfeld has authored more than 160 articles in peer-reviewed journals and more than 30 book chapters.
Joao Fonseca, PhD
Dr. Fonseca has over 15 years of experience in developing and launching breakthrough point of care diagnostic products. Prior to joining Inflammatix, Joao was the founder and former CEO of Biosurfit where he managed multiple R&D teams in diagnostics, covering the fields of instrumentation & optical detection, microfluidics & automated sample prep, assay development and advanced computational methods to convert raw assay information into precise & accurate clinical results. Joao received a PhD in Physics from the Université Louis Pasteur of Strasbourg.
Ljubomir Buturovic, PhD
Ljubomir is VP of Machine Learning at Inflammatix where his team leverages novel data science, machine learning and artificial intelligence to develop and validate the robust clinical algorithms that power the company’s diagnostic tests. Prior to Inflammatix, Dr. Buturovic was the principal at Clinical Persona, a consulting firm specializing in machine learning algorithm development for the life sciences industry. He previously served as chief scientist at Pathwork Diagnostics, Inc., where he led predictive algorithm development for two FDA-cleared genomics tests for cancer. Prior to that, he was bioinformatics director at Incyte Corporation. He has served as adjunct professor of computer science at San Francisco State University since 2005. Dr. Buturovic received his PhD in electrical engineering from University of Belgrade, Serbia, and did postdoctoral training at Boston University’s BioMolecular Engineering Research Center.
Paul Fleming, PhD
Dr. Fleming leads the engineering group at Inflammatix which encompasses systems, mechanical, electrical, software, manufacturing, and consumable engineering, as well as human-centered industrial design, digital design, and human factors, and usability engineering. Prior to Inflammatix, he served as the Director of Program Management and Site Operations for the diagnostic group at Ximedica, a product development company, and Chief Scientist at GenCell Biosystems. Dr. Fleming received his Ph.D. from the University of Limerick, Ireland, where his work focused on the development of an instrument for high throughput gene expression analysis directly from cells.
Diana Lane
Diana Lane is a graduate of the University of California Santa Cruz with a Bachelor’s in Biology. She has worked in Quality Assurance supporting medical device and IVD development and manufacturing since 1989. Ms. Lane took a QA Manager role in 2003, and her positions since that time have expanded to include responsibility for Regulatory Affairs. She was most recently Director of Quality Management and Regulatory Affairs at Roche.
Tawny Darling
Tawny Darling serves as VP, People Operations for Inflammatix. In her role, Ms. Darling is responsible for leading Inflammatix’s overall human resources strategy, global talent acquisition, leadership development, diversity & inclusion, career development, comp & benefits, HR operations, and employee relations.
Ms. Darling has over 18 years of experience in human resources and has worked in the finance, tech, and bio tech industries. She received her BS in Business Management from the University of Arizona in Tucson, AZ (go Wildcats!), and her MA in counseling at Saint Mary’s College in Moraga, CA (go Gaels!).
Jerry Ceglia
Jerry Ceglia leads the Operations and Finance Team bringing 25+ years of manufacturing and supply chain management experience to Inflammatix. He has served in start-up, emerging, and public companies effectively developing teams and infrastructure to provide innovative products for Class II & III medical instruments and consumables.
Jerry recently lead leadership positions at Sientra and St. Jude Medical with responsibilities spanning manufacturing organizations for both in-house and contract partners, Jerry has guided teams from early development through high volume production and commercialization. His extensive experience collaborating with global suppliers has resulted in shorter cycle time, inventory reduction and reduced product cost.
Jerry earned a Bachelor of Science from Notre Dame de Namur University and an MBA from Golden Gate University.
Christopher MacGriff, PhD
Dr. MacGriff serves as Inflammatix’s strategy lead, with a focus on early pipeline ideation and business development partnerships. Previously he was an investor at Northpond Ventures, where his portfolio of businesses included Inflammatix, Intabio (acquired by SCIEX), IsoPlexis (acquired by Berkely Lights), Isolation Bio, and Deep Lens (acquired by Paradigm). Prior to Northpond, he worked in strategy consulting at Health Advances, where he advised clients in the healthcare and life sciences industries. He received a PhD in electrical engineering from Arizona State University and a BS in physics from Georgetown University.
Ashley Prass Miller
As VP of Clinical Operations & Biometrics, Ashley oversees the execution of clinical studies for the development and commercialization of Inflammatix pipeline. Her responsibilities include leading the clinical operations, data management, and clinical programming functions to ensure the success of these studies
Ms. Prasse Miller has over 15 years’ experience in clinical development in both the IVD and biotech industry across a broad spectrum of therapeutic areas. Ashley holds a MS in Regulatory Affairs and BS in Toxicology.
Jennee DeVore
Jennee DeVore serves as the VP of Legal at Inflammatix, where she leads the company’s legal and compliance strategies, drawing on two decades of expertise in the life science industry.
In addition to her role at Inflammatix, Ms. DeVore is a recognized leader in the legal community. She holds the positions of Treasurer and Co-Chair for both the Life Sciences and DEI Committees with the SF Bay Area Chapter of the Association of Corporate Counsel. Additionally, she serves on the Executive Board for TechGC and is a Fractional GC Leader within the Women’s General Counsel Network. Dedicated to mentorship, Ms. DeVore is a WIB-MAPS mentor for Women in Bio, a GC Career Coach for Ms. JD’s LaddHer Up program, and a Tech Edge JD mentor for Santa Clara Law. She is a California licensed attorney, CIPP/E certified, and holds a JD from Santa Clara Law and dual UC Berkeley bachelor’s degrees in Integrative Biology and Legal Studies.
Steve Tablak
Mr. Tablak joined GeneWeave with a great idea for a transformative IVD and helped to build a great company.
Ingo Chakravarty
Ingo Chakravarty is an Operating Partner at Northpond Ventures. He has 30 years of experience in building, scaling and leading high-performance teams and companies in the diagnostics and precision medicine sectors. Ingo was recently President and CEO of Mesa, which he successfully sold to Thermo Fisher Scientific in 2021. Prior to Mesa, Ingo held multiple executive roles in the diagnostics and precision medicine sectors, including CEO of Navican Genomics, SVP and GM of GenMark Diagnostics, (acquired by Roche), VP and GM of Gen-Probe (acquired by Hologic), and various leadership roles at Ventana Medical Systems (acquired by Roche). He received a degree in electrical engineering from the Friedrich Heacker School in Germany.
Heiner Dreismann, PhD
Dr. Dreismann, is a seasoned executive with more than 35 years of experience in the life sciences and health care industries and is regarded as a pioneer in the early adoption of polymerase chain reaction (PCR) technique, one of the most ubiquitous technologies in molecular biology and genetics research today. He earned a master of science degree in biology and his doctor of philosophy degree in microbiology/molecular biology (summa cum laude) from Westfaelische Wilhelms University in Muenster, Germany. Heiner holds a post-doctoral fellowship at the French Center for Nuclear Research in Saclay, near Paris, France and then joined the biotechnology company Roehm and Haas in Darmstadt, Germany.
He joined F. Hoffmann La Roche AG in 1985, and held various national and international management positions. After Roche’s acquisition of PCR technology in 1991, Dr. Dreismann led the PCR Business Unit for Europe and was the head of the strategic planning for PCR diagnostics. From 2000 to 2006 he was President and CEO of Roche Molecular Systems. Dr. Dreismann currently serves on the boards of several public and private life sciences and health care companies in the United States, Europe and Israel.
David H. Persing, MD, PhD
David (Dave) Persing, MD, Ph.D., is Executive Vice President and Chief Medical Officer at Cepheid. He has spent most of his career in biomarker discovery, translational medicine, and innovation in the diagnostics space.
Dave joined Cepheid in 2005 where he developed an industry-leading portfolio of products focused on the enablement of molecular diagnostic technology to meet global challenges in infectious diseases and oncology. From 2017-23, after the acquisition of Cepheid by Danaher, he was appointed to the role of Chief Scientific Officer for the Danaher Diagnostics platform. Dave conducted his scientific and medical training with Don Ganem and Nobel laureate Harold Varmus at the University of California, San Francisco, and obtained his MD and PhD degrees in 1988. After residency training in Laboratory Medicine at Yale, he held leadership roles in academia and industry starting in the early 1990s with the design, implementation, and scaleup of the first PCR reference laboratory at the Mayo Clinic.
His interest in the democratization of molecular diagnostic methods has been longstanding, starting in 1993 with his publication of the first of five widely adopted textbooks to include PCR protocols and guidelines for laboratory operations. He has published over 300 peer-reviewed articles and reviews, including several high impact publications in the New England Journal of Medicine, Science, and PNAS. In 2020, he was named to the Fierce Pharma list of the most influential scientists in the fight against COVID-19. To help maintain a connection with the latest trends in translational medicine, Dave also serves as Consulting Professor of Pathology at Stanford University School of Medicine.
Florian Kainzinger, PhD
Florian Kainzinger serves as a Managing Partner and the Founder of Think.Health Ventures since 2015. Before joining Think.Health Ventures, Mr. Kainzinger has been Chief Executive Officer (CEO) of Labor Berlin between 2011 and 2015, the joint diagnostic organization of the Charité – university medical center and the Vivantes Network for Health Group with more than 400 employees on 12 sites in Berlin. Labor Berlin currently is the largest hospital-connected laboratory network in Europe – with more than 25,000 hospital beds being served by its lab organization.
Prior to Labor Berlin, Mr. Kainzinger worked at Roland Berger Strategy Consultants, a strategic consulting firm serving European healthcare clients. He holds a master’s degree from the University of Munich (Dipl.-Kfm.) and a Ph.D. in health economics from the Charité – Universitätsmedizin Berlin.
Ken Bahk, PhD
Nathan A Ledeboer
Dr. Ledeboer is a Professor and Vice Chair of Pathology and Laboratory Medicine at the Medical College of Wisconsin. Clinically, he serves as the Medical Director of Microbiology and Molecular Diagnostics for Froedtert Hospital and Wisconsin Diagnostic Laboratories in Milwaukee, WI. His research endeavors, particularly in the area developing diagnostic tools for infectious diseases, have led to numerous publications in peer-reviewed journals and more than 100 funded research projects.
Jim Ducharme
Dr. Ducharme is a Clinical Professor of Medicine at McMaster University, and an Adjunct Professor of Medicine at Queens University. He works as an emergency physician at Humber River Hospital in Toronto. Dr. Ducharme is currently the President of the International Federation for Emergency Medicine. Past professional experience includes eleven years as Editor in Chief of the Canadian Journal of Emergency Medicine and serving as President for both the Canadian Association of Emergency Physicians and the Quebec Association of Emergency Physicians. Dr. Ducharme has also held leadership roles in the private sector, having been Chief Medical Officer at MedEmerg (then AIM Health Group) and McKesson Canada.
Laura L. Adams
Laura Adams, Special Advisor at the National Academy of Medicine (NAM), provides leadership for the NAM Digital Health and Evidence Mobilization portfolios of the Leadership Consortium. She has expertise in biotechnology, health care innovation, and human-centered care. She serves on the board of Translational Medicine Accelerator (TMA), a Boston-based precision medicine company focusing on patients with recalcitrant and rare diseases; and the Oversight Council for the MA Center for Health Information and Analysis.
Previously, Laura was the founding President and CEO of the Rhode Island Quality Institute (RIQI), RI’s statewide Health Information Exchange. During her time at RIQI, Health Data Management named her one of their 2018 Most Powerful Women in Health IT in the Thought Leader category and Becker’s Hospital Review named her to the 2018 inaugural list of Female Health IT Leaders to Know and to its 2019 list of Women in Health IT to Know. As Catalyst at X4 Health, Laura led the national strategic partnerships for the 3rd Conversation (3C) project (https://www.3rdconversation.org/), helping to reweave humanity into the fabric of healthcare and healing.
Laura chaired the Institute of Medicine’s (IOM) Planning Committee for the “Digital Infrastructure for Population Health and a Learning Healthcare System” initiative. Through her Laura Adams Consulting company, she has delivered conference keynotes in nearly every state in the union and in 13 different countries.
Laura was Founder, President and CEO of Decision Support Systems, a New York-based company specializing in Internet-based healthcare decision support. She has been a long-time faculty member of the Institute for Healthcare Improvement (IHI) in Boston. She directed the IHI Idealized Design of the Intensive Care Unit project and served as faculty in the VHA’s ICU improvement collaborative and was the Principal Investigator on the RI Statewide ICU Collaborative. She was among the first to bring the principles of healthcare QI to the Middle East, in conjunction with Donald Berwick, MD and the Harvard Institute for Social and Economic Policy in the Middle East. She served as IHI faculty at the inaugural IHI Middle East Forum on Quality Improvement in Healthcare in Doha, Qatar.
Under her leadership, RIQI won the National Council for Community Behavioral Health Excellence Award for Impact in serving those with behavioral health and substance abuse challenges. She received citations from the RI Congressional delegation for her visionary leadership and contributions to improving the healthcare system in Rhode Island. Laura’s company was a multi-year winner of the Greater Providence Chamber of Commerce’s Exemplary award for Worksite Wellness. RIQI was named RI’s Most Innovative Company in Healthcare in 2015; was named 2017 Employer of Choice by the Employer’s Association of New England; and was a multi-year winner of RI’s Best Places to Work award from the Providence Business News. RIQI won the 2017 Innovation Award in Healthcare in Rhode Island; a national 2018 Healthcare Informatics Innovation Award for impact on the opioid crisis; and was a top finalist for the 2018 New England Business Innovation award, again for impact on the opioid crisis.
Mario Torres
Mario Torres has more than 15 years of experience in the Diagnostic device industry and leadership experience in the Molecular diagnostics testing market. Mr. Torres previous roles have included the President and Head of the Roche Molecular Diagnostics Unit deploying PCR’s testing solutions to navigate and support the COVID pandemic challenges. He has held the CFO position for the integrated Roche Molecular Solutions business (Sequencing, Tissue and Molecular Diagnostics units) helping to grow the business and completing several acquisition and integration transactions. His experience also extends to the pharmaceutical industry at F. Hoffmann-La Roche for more than 12 years supporting regions and affiliates in Finance and Operational roles at various locations in Europe, Asia and Central America.
Mr. Torres holds a B.Eng. in Computer Science and a Masters in IT for business from the University of the Andes.
Hector Wong, MD
Dr. Hector R. Wong was a Professor of Pediatrics at Cincinnati Children’s Hospital Medical Center and the University of Cincinnati College of Medicine. He also served as the Director of Critical Care Medicine at Cincinnati Children’s Hospital Medical Center and the Cincinnati Children’s Hospital Research Foundation. His research program was focused on sepsis, and spanned the spectrum from laboratory-based research to translational research. A major focus of the program was the development of stratification, prognostic, and diagnostic biomarkers.