Jacob (Jake) Rubens, PhD

Jacob (Jake) Rubens is the CEO of Serif and an Orig­i­na­tion Part­ner at Flag­ship Pio­neer­ing. He is a sci­en­tist entre­pre­neur lead­ing a Pio­neer­ing Busi­ness Unit that founds and grows com­pa­nies based on new biotechnology.

At Flag­ship, Jake co-found­ed Serif Bio­med­i­cines, Quo­tient Ther­a­peu­tics, Tessera Ther­a­peu­tics, and Sana Biotech­nol­o­gy, and launched Kalei­do Bio­sciences. Pre­vi­ous­ly, Jake was Co-Founder and Chief Exec­u­tive Offi­cer of Quo­tient; Co-Founder, Chief Sci­en­tif­ic Offi­cer, and Chief Inno­va­tion Offi­cer at Tessera, where he led research from 2018 through 2021; and Co-Founder of Sana Biotech­nol­o­gy, where he co-invent­ed and devel­oped the company’s Fuso­some plat­form at Cobalt Bio­med­i­cine pri­or to its merg­er with Sana.

Before join­ing Flag­ship, Jake received his PhD in micro­bi­ol­o­gy from MIT, work­ing in the Syn­thet­ic Biol­o­gy Cen­ter with Pro­fes­sor Tim Lu with the sup­port of a Nation­al Sci­ence Foun­da­tion Grad­u­ate Research Fel­low­ship. At MIT Jake invent­ed gene cir­cuits that allow engi­neered cells to do nov­el ana­log, dig­i­tal, and hybrid com­pu­ta­tions, enabling the emerg­ing field of ​“intel­li­gent” cell therapies.

Jake’s work has result­ed in mul­ti­ple pend­ing patents and pub­li­ca­tions, includ­ing arti­cles in Nature and Nature Com­mu­ni­ca­tions. Jake was named to Forbes’ 30 under 30 list in sci­ence, End­points’ 20(+1) Under 40 list of the next gen­er­a­tion of biotech lead­ers, Busi­ness Insid­ers’ list of 12 young ser­i­al entre­pre­neurs build­ing the next gen­er­a­tion of biotech star­tups, and InVivo’s Ris­ing Lead­ers list of indus­try influencers.