Our team

Vineet Agarwal, MBA, chief financial officer at Korro Bio, is a seasoned finance professional with over 14 years of Investment banking experience working with innovative biopharma companies.

Prior to joining Korro, Vineet was most recently senior executive director with J.P. Morgan Chase & Co.’s healthcare investment banking group based out of New York. There, he had broad coverage across the life sciences industry, helping companies with mission-critical financings including private placements, initial public offerings (IPOs), special purpose acquisition companies (SPACs), primary and secondary equity follow-on offerings (FOs), convertible equity and debt deals. He was also responsible for advising clients on strategic transactions including acquisitions, mergers and licensing deals, and has worked on transformative M&A deals in the biopharma space.

Vineet began his career with J.P. Morgan in 2007 and has served in numerous leadership roles across different countries.

Vineet earned his MBA from the Institute of Management Technology, India, and bachelor’s degree in finance from Shri Ram College of Commerce (SRCC), India.

Ram Aiyar, Ph.D., MBA, is the chief executive officer and president of Korro Bio and sits on the board of directors.

Ram brings nearly two decades of diverse experience in biotech and pharma, working across all stages of development from launch to clinical to commercialization. He has a long history of launching and building biotech startups, and previously held a wide range of roles in finance, strategy, product development and venture capital. Most recently, he was a co-founder, chief financial officer and chief business officer at Corvidia Therapeutics, and eventually led its acquisition by Novo Nordisk for $2.1B. Prior to Corvidia, he was an entrepreneur-in-residence at BioHealth Innovation (BHI).

Ram started his scientific career in research at Janssen Pharmaceuticals’ immunology group. He has also held leadership roles in corporate development, finance and strategy at FlowMetric Inc., Sofinnova Partners, and J.P. Morgan Chase.

Ram received his M.S. and Ph.D. in electrical and computer engineering from Drexel University and an MBA in finance and business strategy from INSEAD (France/Singapore).

Todd Chappell, senior vice president of strategy and portfolio planning at Korro Bio, brings twenty years of product development and product strategy experience.

Todd is a veteran industry executive who has led several early-stage therapeutic programs from discovery stage through to clinical trials.  Most recently, he served as CEO for two seed-staged companies, Rasio Therapeutics, Inc. and Perceptive Navigation, LLC.  Prior to being CEO, Mr. Chappell managed a portfolio of start-up pharmaceutical and medical device companies as an entrepreneur-in-residence at a private-public partnership involving Johns Hopkins University, National Institutes of Health, Medimmune, NEA, and SROne.  From 2009 to 2012, Todd ran Shape Pharmaceuticals, Inc., a portfolio company of HealthCare Ventures, LLC, where he oversaw all day-to-day operations for the development of a novel HDAC inhibitor for Cutaneous-T-Cell-Lymphoma. Prior to Shape, Mr. Chappell was at CombinatoRx, Inc. for eight years and served as Executive Director of New Products. In that role, Mr. Chappell led the advancement of three programs from assay stage into human clinical studies.

Todd holds a B.S. from University of California at Los Angeles and a MBA from Boston University.

Steve Colletti, Ph.D., chief scientific officer at Korro Bio, brings nearly 30 years of drug discovery and development experience covering a broad range of therapeutic areas and modalities.

Steve was previously SVP of Drug Discovery R&D at Zymergen (acquired by Ginkgo Bioworks in 2022) and CSO at Lodo Therapeutics (acquired by Zymergen in 2021). He has nearly 25 years of experience from multiple roles at Merck, with leadership in small molecule, natural products, oligonucleotide, peptide and fusion protein bioconjugate drug discovery, targeting programs in cardiovascular and respiratory disease, diabetes and obesity, immunological disorders, infectious diseases, neuroscience and oncology. Dr. Colletti built and led the RNA Therapeutics Medicinal Chemistry department and was a core member of multiple development teams that were responsible for discovering more than a dozen preclinical candidates and advancing them to clinical development. His duties also included working closely with licensing and business development, evaluating external opportunities and helping to manage acquisitions. Dr. Colletti is an inventor and author of over 130 patents and publications.

Steve received his Ph.D. in chemistry from Boston University and was a National Institutes of Health postdoctoral fellow in chemistry at the Scripps Research Institute.

Stephanie Engels is senior vice president of people and culture at Korro Bio, bringing over 20 years of HR leadership experience in the life science and healthcare sectors.

Prior to joining Korro, Ms. Engels served as vice president, head of HR business partnerships and corporate functions at Moderna, which included driving the organizational design and scaling of corporate functions pre- and post-commercialization of groundbreaking vaccine technology, the talent strategy and co-development of the company’s international Enterprise Solutions Hub project and the onboarding and integration of multiple C-suite executives. Prior to Moderna, Ms. Engels was vice president, talent at Zimmer Biomet, where she led talent acquisition and development efforts. Previously she served as vice president & head of HR, corporate functions & global product strategy at Shire, where she notably acted as the HR representative during the company’s acquisition and integration by Takeda. Prior to her position at Shire, Ms. Engels accumulated experience in a variety of HR leadership roles across global Fortune 100 life sciences corporations.

Venkat Krishnamurthy, Ph.D., is senior vice president of platform at Korro Bio, with over ten years of experience in RNA based therapeutics, oligonucleotide chemistry and non-viral delivery technologies.

Before arriving at Korro, Dr. Krishnamurthy held an executive director role at Eli Lilly & Company, where he was responsible for strategic direction for Lilly’s genetic medicine portfolio. Prior to this, Dr. Krishnamurthy was a team lead at AstraZeneca, where he built a new modalities group at the Boston site to support the company’s mRNA and genome editing projects from discovery to clinic. He began his industry career at Dicerna Pharmaceuticals and was one of the early chemists to advance the company’s siRNA platform. He also made critical contributions to the advancement of Nedosiran, Dicerna’s first GalNAc-siRNA program currently in Phase 3. Ahead of his experience in industry, Dr. Krishnamurthy was a faculty member at Harvard Medical School, where he led a lab focused on non-viral delivery for cell therapy and tissue engineering. He has contributed to over 30 publications and patents, and some of his work laid the foundation for projects funded by the National Institutes of Health. Dr. Krishnamurthy earned his doctorate in organic chemistry from the University of Illinois, Chicago, and completed postdoctoral training at Princeton University. He also holds bachelor’s and master’s degrees in chemistry from Loyola College and the Indian Institute of Technology, Chennai, respectively.

Shelby Walker, JD, senior vice president and general counsel at Korro Bio, brings over 20 years of experience in biotech senior leadership along with legal and intellectual property expertise.

Prior to Korro, Shelby served as senior vice president and head of intellectual property at CRISPR Therapeutics. Before CRISPR, she was general counsel at Gingko Bioworks, a synthetic biology company. Ahead of this role, she served as vice president, associate general counsel and chief IP counsel at Dyax Corporation. Prior to Dyax, Ms. Walker held a variety of intellectual property leadership roles across multiple biotech companies including Novo Nordisk and ZymoGenetics. She holds a JD and LLM in intellectual property law from the University of New Hampshire School of Law, master’s degrees in biotechnology and regulatory science, both from Johns Hopkins University, and a B.S. in biotechnology from Worcester Polytechnic Institute.

Nessan Bermingham, Ph.D. is the co-founder and chairman of the board of directors of Korro Bio. He is also a founder, CEO and president of Triplet Therapeutics, Inc.

He is a serial biotech entrepreneur and investor who has founded several companies including Triplet, Korro Bio and Intellia Therapeutics, “one of the top 10 biotech start-ups in 2014” and a “Fierce 15 biotech company,” taking the company from concept to IPO and large partnering deals with approximately 200 employees. He has nearly two decades of experience in Life Sciences startups and investments, including small molecules, biologics, medical devices and diagnostics through venture, public and secondary markets.

As a venture partner at Atlas Venture and managing partner at Omega Funds, he successfully invested in and managed multiple investments across the United States and Europe. Currently he is also a venture partner at Atlas Venture. He served as Intellia’s president and CEO from inception until December 2017. Previously he was an independent advisory board member of the California Institute of Regenerative Medicine (CIRM) and MerckSerono KGaA.

He received his Ph.D. in molecular biology from Imperial College London and was a Howard Hughes Associate Fellow at Baylor College of Medicine. He is an avid mountain biker, snowboarder and trail runner.

Jean-François Formela, co-founder and board member of Korro Bio, is a partner at Atlas Venture and focuses on novel drug discovery approaches and therapeutics. He joined Atlas in 1993 to build the U.S. life sciences franchise.

He is a director and co-founder of IFM Therapeutics, Intellia Therapeutics (NASDAQ: NTLA) and Triplet Therapeutics. Jean-François also serves on the boards of Ikena Oncology (NASDAQ: IKNA) and Scorpion Therapeutics.

Some of his prior investments include Arteaus Therapeutics (acquired by Eli Lilly), CoStim Pharmaceuticals (acquired by Novartis), Exelixis (NASDAQ: EXEL) and Translate Bio (NASDAQ: TBIO, acquired by Sanofi).

Jean-François received his M.D. from Paris University School of Medicine and his MBA from Columbia University.

Andrew Fraley, Ph.D., co-founder of Korro Bio, holds over 20 years of experience in the field of nucleic acid technologies and therapeutics.

Prior to co-founding Korro, Andrew was a co-founder of Triplet Therapeutics, and a founding executive team member serving as SVP of translational sciences for Trucode Gene Repair, an in vivo gene editing company, leading the company’s scientific strategy and operations. He has also served in key senior leadership roles within the biotech community, including Moderna Therapeutics, enabling the development of modified messenger RNA, and Ensemble Therapeutics, providing leadership for platform development and macrocyclic discovery.

Andrew has authored and reviewed scientific publications and is listed as an inventor on patents in areas including nucleic acid therapeutics, oligonucleotide delivery and macrocyclic drug discovery. He has served as a Boston University Kindle Mentor and has consulted for government organizations, venture firms and biotech startups. He holds a B.A. from DePauw University, earned his Ph.D. in bio-organic chemistry at Boston College and was a Chateaubriand Postdoctoral Research Fellow at the Université de Louis Pasteur.

Josh Rosenthal, Ph.D., co-founder and advisor to Korro Bio, is a neurobiologist at the Marine Biological Laboratory (MBL) who studies how marine organisms adapt to the physical environment.

Josh’s research focuses on developing new, genetically tractable marine model organisms and understanding how they are affected by a changing environment. His expertise is in RNA editing, a natural process by which RNA transcripts from expressed genes in a cell are edited, thereby potentially altering the proteins that the cell will produce.

Josh first came to the MBL in the 1990s with William F. Gilly, his doctoral advisor at Stanford University, to conduct research on the squid giant axon. He subsequently did postdoctoral research at the University of California, Los Angeles, with Francisco Bezanilla (now a Professor at the University of Chicago), with whom he also collaborated at the MBL. Prior to the MBL, Josh came from the University of Puerto Rico, Medical Sciences Campus, where he was a professor at the Institute of Neurobiology.