SALT LAKE CITY--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Recursion Pharmaceuticals, an emerging biotech in Salt Lake City, today announced that successful and serial technology entrepreneur and executive John Pereira, MBA, has joined the team as Chief Operating Officer. As former COO of Experticity, VP of AncestryDNA, and a leader of operational growth at Amazon in its earlier days, Mr. Pereira brings a wealth of experience in business management, operations and technology strategy to Recursion’s rapidly growing business.
Chris Gibson, PhD, CEO of Recursion stated: “We are elated to bring John in as COO. His history of guiding businesses from startups to successes, and his extraordinary background in management, operations and strategy across industries is the perfect fit for us as we rapidly scale our complex business to meet the needs of our current and future partners, and ultimately to deliver on our mission to help bring 100 new treatments to patients in the coming years.”
The announcement of Mr. Pereira as COO follows closely on Recursion’s recent announcement of a successful $12.9M Series A funding round. “John’s business acumen, track-record and his background in mathematics was a clear fit for our transformational approach to leveraging technology, big data, and artificial intelligence to change the way drug discovery is conducted,” said Blake Borgeson, PhD, CTO of Recursion.
Leading Silicon Valley deep technology Venture Firm Lux Capital led the recent Series A. "Folks of John's technology and operational caliber simply don't find their way to pharma often. This addition is indicative of Recursion's multidisciplinary approach and hyper-focus on technology development and operations first and foremost," said Lux's Zavain Dar, who also sits on the Recursion Board. "We see this not as a standalone announcement, but as a continued call to arms for top technologists and entrepreneurs across the country that Recursion is leading the charge in AI and pharma. If you're serious about disrupting biotech with technology, AI, and automation, then there is unequivocally no other place to be."
“Recursion's unique approach, at the intersection of data science, artificial intelligence, and biology is truly impressive and groundbreaking. I couldn't be more excited to join the team and help build out a world-class organization focused on curing diseases with unprecedented efficiency,” said John Pereira.
About John Pereira, MBA
Mr. Pereira is former COO of Experticity, a service that connects millions of industry experts with the world’s biggest brands and retailers to increase sales. Prior to Experticity, Mr. Pereira was Vice President of all Product, Marketing and Operational activities at AncestryDNA, Ancestry.com’s DNA business unit, where he built and launched the service, ultimately delivering on Ancestry’s unique combination of genomics with family history. Mr. Pereira has also served as Senior Manager of Operations Integration at Amazon.com, where he increased partnerships and oversaw operations of the Canadian fulfillment center, and a Naval Officer for the US Navy, where he led the Navigation and Administrative Department of the USS Reid, among other positions and duties. In addition to these positions, Mr. Pereira serves on the Board of Directors for Athletigen and the Advisory Board of Channel Signal. Mr. Pereira has a passion for new technology and a desire to break down traditional business barriers that pervades every aspect of his career.
About Recursion Pharmaceuticals, LLC
Recursion Pharmaceuticals, LLC, is a Salt Lake City-based drug discovery company founded in 2013 based on technology developed at the University of Utah. Recursion uses a novel drug screening platform to efficiently reposition known drugs and shelved pharmaceutical assets to treat rare genetic diseases and other conditions. The company’s original focus on rare genetic diseases is much-needed, as there are more than 5,000 such conditions that together affect millions of Americans, and more than 95 percent of these diseases have no approved therapy. Recursion’s novel drug screening platform combines experimental biology and bioinformatics in a massively parallel system to quickly and efficiently identify treatments for multiple rare genetic diseases, or any disease that can be modeled at the cellular level. The core of the approach revolves around high-throughput automated screening using high-content assays in human cells, which allows the near simultaneous modeling of hundreds of genetic and other diseases. Rich data from these assays is probed using advanced statistical and machine learning approaches, and the effects of thousands of known drugs, shelved drug candidates, and novel chemical matter can be investigated efficiently to identify those holding the most promise for the treatment of disease. Learn more at www.recursionpharma.com, or connect with us on Twitter @RecursionPharma, Facebook www.facebook.com/RecursionPharma/, and LinkedIn https://www.linkedin.com/company/recursion-pharmaceuticals.
