Leadership

Jed McCaleb is the founder of the Astera Institute. His focus is on accelerating progress, expanding potential, and increasing net happiness. He is also co-founder and Chief Architect of the Stellar Development Foundation, the organization that maintains the open-source Stellar Network and founder of Vast, the organization that is building the first commercial space station.

Seemay is a scientist, co-founder and CEO at Arcadia Science, chairperson of The Navigation Fund, and forever-Texan at heart. She received a PhD in Molecular Cell Biology from UC Berkeley and was previously a Pew Scholar and an assistant professor in the Department of Biochemistry and Biophysics at UC San Francisco.

Becky is the CEO of Radial, where she leverages a career defined by scaling scientific innovation across academic research, industrial R&D, and venture capital. Prior to joining Astera, Becky was an Investing Partner on the a16z Bio + Health team, building and funding cutting-edge biotech platforms. Her foundational experience spans both drug discovery and strategic development, including roles as an R&D Scientist and Business Development leader at Amgen, as well as postdoctoral studies at Genentech. She holds a Ph.D. from UC Berkeley and a B.S. from MIT.

Prachee has spent most of her academic life furthering the cause of Open Science. With a PhD in neuroscience, Prachee was previously Associate Professor of Biochemistry & Cell Biology at Dartmouth’s Geisel School of Medicine. She is co-founder and Chief Science Officer at Arcadia Science; former president of the ASAPbio Board of Directors, former director and chair of the board at eLife, a member of Incentivizing Collaborative and Open Research; and a bioRxiv affiliate. As Astera’s Head of Open Science, Prachee leads the effort to experiment with approaches and develop tools that push the boundaries of open science. 

Dr. Dileep George is an entrepreneur, scientist, and engineer working on AI, robotics, and neuroscience. He co-founded two companies in AI — Numenta, and Vicarious. At Numenta he co-developed the theory of Hierarchical Temporal Memory with Jeff Hawkins. Vicarious, his second company, was a pioneer in AI for robotics, and developed neuroscience-inspired models for vision, mapping, and concept learning. Vicarious was acquired by Alphabet to accelerate its robotics and AGI efforts. Dr. George has an MS and Ph.D in Electrical Engineering from Stanford University, and a B.Tech in Electrical Engineering from IIT Bombay.

Doris Tsao is the Chief Scientist for Neuro at Astera. Previously, she was a professor at UC Berkeley in the Neuroscience Department and a Howard Hughes Medical Institute Investigator. She is known for elucidating the anatomical anatomy and coding principles of the primate face-processing system and for demonstrating its integration into a broader map of object space. Her recent theoretical work proposes a topological account of how object representations emerge in the visual system. She now aims to build on these advances to develop a deeper understanding of perception and consciousness through large-scale, causal manipulation of neural circuits.

Eli previously worked at the Abundance Institute, the Center for Growth and Opportunity, Boom Supersonic, and the Mercatus Center. He has incepted the cargo airship industry, written for the New York Times and the Wall Street Journal, negotiated global supersonic standards at ICAO, derailed an international treaty as a State Department advisor, spent too much time on Twitter, and earned a PhD in economics from George Mason University.

Anika is the COO of Astera’s Foundation Division, where she leads the business and operational functions that support the Foundation’s scientific mission. Previously, she started as a generalist at the Boston Consulting Group and KKR before leading Strategy and Operations for R&D at Solugen. She received SB’s in Materials Science and Engineering and in Management at MIT, and her MBA from the Stanford Graduate School of Business.