Irena Ivanovska, Ph.D., Site Head/Boston and Director, Celdara Medical, leads the development of therapeutic programs in several disease areas, is responsible for operations of the Boston office, as well as sourcing and vetting of new pipeline assets. In addition, she serves as an Alliance Manager in support of Celdara’s Pipeline Development Service partnerships with pharmaceutical companies. She also leads Celdara’s due diligence efforts. Prior to Celdara, Irena was a Senior Research Biologist at Rosetta Inpharmatics, LLC (a wholly owned subsidiary of Merck and Co.), where she identified and validated cell cycle microRNAs as targets for oncology, developed siRNA delivery methods to physiologically-relevant primary cell systems and identified gene expression disease biomarkers. As an associate principal investigator in the Respiratory and Immunology department at Merck-Boston, she led a cross-functional team that delivered a validation package and a small molecule lead for an autoimmune disease target. Irena received her Ph.D. in Molecular Biology from Princeton University for discovering new structural and signaling pathways that regulate yeast cell division. As a postdoctoral fellow at the Whitehead Institute of MIT, she identified a new histone modification critical for proper chromosome structure. She received an NIH National Research Service Award and a Leukemia and Lymphoma Society Career Development Fellowship to pursue these studies. Irena has been a member and a volunteer in several biotechnology professional organizations, including HBA, WEST and AWIS. Irena has been developing Celdara’s presence in and relationships with the Boston biotech and academic communities since 2017.