Team

Founder Investors

Pravin Kini, MD.,

Director

Dr. Pravin Kini is a Serial Entrepreneur in healthcare and life sciences and Professional specialized in Infertility Medicine and Advanced reproductive technologies. Dr. Pravin Kini is the founder of Iscape Sciences – Meditech and Biotech incubator, which is a Health care Incubator and Investment company and its interests are Cell based therapy, medical skill education, progressive parenting, IVD manufacture and Large scale Embryo Production. Previous to that Dr. Kini was a founder of Bourn Hall Clinic International (P) Ltd, Progenee Inc., Isansys, Accacia,CytoGenomics Inc., Tropical Animal Genetics India (P) Ltd – TAG.
Dr. Kini was also the Co-founder of Bourn Hall International, CEO Bourn Hall Clinic – India. Bourn Hall Clinic is the world’s first IVF clinic with its founders Robert Edwards (Nobel prize winner 2010 for Medicine) and Patrick Steptoe were responsible for the First IVF baby Louise Browne. In addition to this Dr. Kini has held prestigious positions within Health industry.

Simon Best

Director

Simon is a World Economic Forum “Global Leader of Tomorrow” and experienced Angel, Venture Capital and Private Equity investor. Currently Chairman of Canadian Rare-Disease Company ProMetic Lifesciences Inc. Previous Chairman of ICRISAT in Hyderabad and CEO of Roslin BioMed which he spun out of the Roslin Institute to commercialize its animal cloning platform.

Execution Team

Srinivasan S.

COO

Prior to joining Jiva Sciences, he was with Systemantics, an early stage robotics company for 6 years, as COO. After passing out from IIMA, Srini was in the corporate finance sector of investment banking for 13 years, 5 years with SBICAP and 8 years with KPMG Corporate Finance, where he did a number of transactions in M&A and private equity.
Srini then moved to industry to take up operational roles in new businesses and was with Siemens and later with KSK Power Ventures (a power developer) before moving to the technology industry with Systemantics. In industry, Srini’s experience has been in managing product development in technology and in VC fund raising.
Srini is an undergraduate form IITM.

Puneet Kumar Gupta (Ph.D.)

Scientist

Puneet earned his Ph.D in Biotechnology from Jamia Hamdard in New Delhi. He has worked in institutes such as International Centre for Genetic Engineering & Biotechnology, International Centre for Genetic Engineering & Biotechnology and currently also with NextGen Invitro Diagnostics. He has been a Process development manager at the Malaria Vaccine Development Program (MVDP). His research focus was previously for developing malaria vaccines for both P. falciparum and P. vivax, based on merozoite surface proteins that can generate protective immune responses in the human host. One investigational malaria vaccine, JAIVAC-1 has completed Phase 1 trial, the first in-man clinical trial in India. He also contributed for development of next generation combination blood stage vaccines; JAIVAC-2 & JAIVAC -3 that includes a number of merozoite surface proteins; MSP-1, MSP-3, MSP1-MSP3 fusion, AARP-MSP fusion. At Jiva Sciences, he conducts the biological development of one of our bioengineering projects in Centre for Cellular and Molecular Platforms (C-CAMP)NCBS-TIFR.

Prithvi Kini

Human Resources and Operations

Prithvi earned her B.A. (Hons) from Lady Shri Ram College for Women in New Delhi. She then went on to work at D. E. Shaw Research in Hyderabad. She is focused on science management and development of technology in the sphere of bioengineering and biotechnology.

Jonathan Pillai (Ph.D.)

Project Lead

Jon comes from a background of Mechanical Engineering, and was awarded his Ph.D. in Biomedical Engineering from Ohio State University (U.S.). He has specialized in medical device innovation from the Stanford-India Biodesign Program, a Department of Biotechnology, Govt. of India sponsored fellowship operated jointly by Stanford University (U.S.) and the All India Institute of Medical Sciences (New Delhi, India). He has multiple patent applications and has successfully raised grant funding for med-tech innovations. Prior to joining Jiva, Jon was an Assistant Professor at the Centre for Biodesign at the Translational Health Science and Technology Institute at the NCR Biotech Science Cluster (Faridabad, India). At Jiva, Jon brings his experience in identifying unmet clinical needs and inventing custom-designed products tailored to solving these in a scalable manner. He currently leads the engineering activities and product development for initiatives in diagnostic and therapeutic opto-fluidic platforms designed for emerging markets.

Aftab Baig

Engineer

Aftab has earned his Masters from IIT Madras for doing his research on Laser interferometer for gravitational wave observatory (LIGO) in collaboration with Max Planck institute of Gravitational Physiscs and Albert Einstien Institute. During his tenure he also worked on other Mega science projects like Indian Based Neutrino Observatory (INO) and served as project associate in P.G Senapathy for computer sciences. Before that he served Accenture services private limited as a software engineer for about 30 months after completing his bachelors in Elecronics and Communications. His current interest is in Embedded systems, Optical Communications, LIGO, Electronics and Robotics.

Scientific Advisors

Anil Prabhakar

Domain Expert

Dr. Anil Prabhakar received his PhD in 1997 from Carnegie Mellon University, with a dissertation on the Nonlinear Spin-wave Optical Interactions. He has been with the faculty at the Dept. of Electrical Engineering, IIT-Madras since 2002 with current research interests in the areas of photonics, magnonics, bio-engineering and assistive technologies. He has co-authored a book on Spin Waves, has more than 40 journal papers and 5 patents. He is a Director of an IITM incubated company, Unilumen Photonics, that focuses on fibre laser development. Dr. Prabhakar is also a Director of Enability Foundation and a Trustee of Chetana Charitable Trust, organizations that promote the indigenous development of assistive technologies, and raise societal awareness on issues of disability . Prior to joining IIT Madras, Dr. Prabhakar held various staff and managerial positions in the hard disk drive industry, working in areas of design, characterization and failure analysis of GMR recording heads. He was a recipient of the 2007 the INAE Young Engineer, for his contributions to optics and electromagnetics.

Dr. Taslimarif Saiyed

Domain Expert

Taslimarif Saiyed is the Director and COO of C-CAMP, Centre for Cellular and Molecular Platforms. In this role, he manages C-CAMP’s technology platforms, growth strategies, strategic collaborations for new technology creation, education and training programmes, business and innovation accelerator unit. He also oversees the Intellecutual Property and Technology Transfer Office at C-CAMP.

Prior to joining C-CAMP, he worked as a Scientist with University of California, San Francisco (UCSF), studying neurodegenerative diseases like Parkinson’s disease. He holds a doctorate in Neuroscience from Max-Planck Institute for Brain Research, Germany. In the bay area, he also served as a Management Consultant with QB3 New Biotech Venture Consulting as well as in an individual capacity where he consulted for biotech firms in the US.