Civilization Ventures

GENE / CELL THERAPIES

NASDAQ: RCKT Shahram is the Founder and General Partner of Civilization Ventures, a mentor capital firm focused on supporting cutting edge innovations in health tech and biology

Prior to founding Civilization Ventures, Shahram was a life sciences entrepreneur and angel investor for more than a decade Shahram was the founding CEO and later Executive Chairman of Rgenix, a biotech company with multiple first-in-class therapeutics for cancer now in Phase 2 clinical trials Prior to Rgenix, he was founding CFO and VP of Corporate Development at NextBio, a genomics pioneer acquired by Illumina Shahram sits on the boards of Rewrite and Foresight and has been one of the first checks into frontier tech companies such as Omada Health, CatalogDNA, Evonetix, BilliontoOne, Lemonaid Health, Outpace Bio, Ample, Avantome (acquired by Illumina), Bina (acquired by Roche), Rocket Pharma (IPO), and Counsyl (acquired by Myriad)

Shahram began his career in Silicon Valley over twenty years ago at Wilson Sonsini and went on to advise some of the world’s preeminent technology leaders while at Goldman Sachs He earned his JD from Harvard Law School and obtained a BA in Economics from Pomona College Shahram founded CV in 2017 to support innovations that could – with some luck and perseverance – improve human health, preserve the world’s natural resources, and further our shared civilization

Ruxandra is a part-time Analyst at Civilization Ventures where she works on the due diligence team and assists on other projects, including the Civilization Fellowship Program She is currently a genomics PhD student at the University of Cambridge and the Sanger Institute Prior to her PhD, Ruxandra obtained her Masters degree in Biochemistry from the University of Oxford Ruxandra’s graduate work is focussed on the topic of “somatic evolution” and its interplay with ageing and cancer You can read more about her work in her blog post

Ruxandra was born and raised in Iasi, Romania In her free time, she enjoys reading literature, the visual arts and philosophy

OUR NETWORK OF ADVISORS