Leadership

Esther Rawner is a board-certified neurologist and leader in drug development. She brings a wealth of experience and expertise to her role as Senior Vice President of Alkahest. She holds a Doctor of Medicine from New York Medical College and a Bachelor’s Degree in Biochemistry and Molecular Biology from Mills College. She completed her Medical Internship at Tulane University School of Medicine, her Neurology Residency at Yale University School of Medicine, followed by a Neurology Headache Fellowship at the University of Washington School of Medicine. Building and directing programs in clinical academia and successfully advancing and leading development programs in Biopharma, she has demonstrated visionary leadership and strategic aptitude in improving Neurologic care in academia and leading Drug Development at Grifols.

Scott Lohr has more than two decades of biotechnology experience with an emphasis on data management and analysis systems. His biotechnology journey started at Chiron, where he was on the cGMP manufacturing team for the multiple sclerosis drug Betaseron®. Scott then moved into bioinformatics as the field of functional genomics expanded and developed expertise in the area of data modeling of scientific workflows. Over the next two decades, he worked at large and small companies such as Genentech and Crescendo Bioscience, managing the storage, analysis, and distribution of data for in-house cancer genome projects to commercial diagnostics products. Scott received his Bachelor of Science in molecular biology and biochemistry from the University of California, Santa Cruz.

Benoit Lehallier, PhD, is head of data science at Alkahest Inc., where he uses cutting-edge proteomics to understand the cause of diseases and to identify new drug targets and early biomarkers of disease. Before joining Alkahest, Dr. Lehallier was a faculty member in the department of neurology at Stanford, where he led research on the molecular changes associated with normal and abnormal aging. Benoit’s research, featured in top scientific journals like Nature and covered extensively by mainstream media, has reshaped our understanding of the plasma proteome. Dr. Lehallier has more than 15 years of experience in industry and academia in integrating complex molecular signals in a systems biology context and has worked on dozens of cross-sectional and longitudinal cohorts.

Sara Ahadi, PhD, is the Head of Omics and Mass Spectrometry at Alkahest, where she leads omics profiling of plasma using advanced techniques in affinity and mass spectrometry-based proteomics, lipidomics and metabolomics. Her team of proteomics and data scientists leverages latest technologies and integrative multiomics analysis to drive biomarker discovery. 

Sara earned her PhD from the UC, Davis, before joining Mike Snyder’s lab at Stanford University as a postdoc. There, she worked on integrative analysis of population omics, contributing to precision medicine and aging research through a multiomics lens. She later continued her research at Google, uncovering a novel aging clock based on analysis of retinal images.

Sara has published numerous articles in leading journals and is deeply engaged in the proteomics community, contributing to the development of solutions for some of the field’s most pressing challenges.

Chunmiao (Mia) Feng is the Associate Director of Biostatistics at Alkahest, where she leads efforts in preclinical and clinical proteomic analysis, leveraging cutting-edge technologies. She and her team combine biostatistical methods, advanced machine learnings techniques and biological insights to uncover the molecular basis of complex diseases, identify therapeutic targets, and discover biomarkers for innovative treatments. She brings over 15 years of cross-disciplinary research experience, with extensive expertise in analyzing cross-sectional and longitudinal preclinical and clinical data to advance cures for heterogeneous diseases such as Parkinson’s disease (PD) and Alzheimer’s disease (AD). Mia holds a PhD and MS from North Carolina State University and a BS from Fudan University in Shanghai. She completed her postdoctoral training at Duke University, where she also served as a lecturer. 

Idit Kosti is the Associate Director of Real-World Data Analytics, leading the annotations team at Alkahest. She leverages advanced computational approaches, including machine learning, to analyze real-world data (RWD), generating novel insights into complex diseases and shedding light on molecular signals from proteomics data. With over 15 years of experience in computational biology research, Idit possesses deep expertise in analyzing omics and RWD to advance knowledge and understanding across diverse disease areas. Idit earned her PhD from the Technion and completed postdoctoral training at the Bakar Computational Health Sciences Institute at University of California, San Francisco. Her research findings are published in leading journals, driving advancements in our understanding of disease and paving the way for future breakthroughs in precision medicine.

Nathan is the Associate Director of Genome Informatics at Alkahest, bringing nearly 20 years of experience in bioinformatics and genomics to his role. Specializing in highly scalable and reproducible research, Nathan excels at bridging scientific inquiry with technical excellence. He leads transformative initiatives at the intersection of data science, informatics and software engineering, driving innovation across Alkahest’s research programs. A key focus of Nathan’s work is ensuring that Chronos-PD is well-positioned to scale within the Parkinson’s disease project and expand to support future research initiatives. By integrating advanced computational tools with robust engineering practices, Nathan ensures the seamless, reproducible and scalable analyses within Chonos-PD and beyond. Nathan holds a PhD in Bioinformatics from University of York and a Master of Pharmacology from University of Bath. 

Michael Bechauf is the Director of Software and Data Engineering at Alkahest, where he is responsible for providing a scalable data infrastructure and oversees the software engineering processes that ensure robust data analysis and real-world data (RWD) experience for the scientific teams. Michael has more than two decades of experience with enterprise-critical software and infrastructure. Previously, he was Director of Architecture at the Boston Consulting Group (BCG) with a focus on software, life sciences and high-tech clients. Before that, he spent several years at SAP, where he was responsible for the company’s open-source strategy and partner engineering within the HANA in memory database team. He also worked at several startups, including iXOS, acquired by OpenText, and Model N, a leader in Revenue Management software. Michael received his BS in Physics from the University of Applied Sciences in Munich, Germany.