2027 Co-Chair Biographies

Dave Stevenson, COO & Managing Director, Merck Global Health Innovation Fund
Dave Stevenson is COO & Managing Director and a founding partner of Merck GHI Fund since inception in 2010. GHI Fund invests venture capital in start-up companies that improve health care as well as those that improve pharmaceutical operations specifically. Dave is responsible for identifying opportunities in clinical trials and also manages the GHI portfolio and operations. Dave brings more than 25 years of healthcare strategy and operations expertise to the GHI team. Dave started his career with Novartis, where he built their first clinical trial management system. He holds an MBA from Vanderbilt University and a BA from Washington University.

Rana Lonnen, General Partner, Science Capital
Rana Lonnen is a healthcare technology investor, entrepreneur, and molecular biologist. At Novartis, she leads strategic investments in technology companies, on a mission to transform the healthcare ecosystem and make positive impact on people’s lives. Previously, Rana was Head of Preclinical Development at a UK biotech, Auspherix; investment consultant to IP Group in London; Founder and CSO of a UK-based Biotech, Axendos Therapeutics. Prior to this, she was a Wellcome Trust-backed principal investigator in drug discovery in the field of Infection, Immunity, and Inflammation, author and inventor on high-impact peer-reviewed publications and patents; before this, Rana worked at Bristol-Myers Squibb in sales and marketing. Rana holds a PhD in molecular biology and an MBA from Imperial College London. She personally cares about equitable healthcare, social justice, sustainability, and the future of antimicrobial resistance. In her downtime, Rana likes to make culinary experiments, be in nature, and read. Rana is a board observer at Aktana, Cota Healthcare, H1 Insights, Koneksa, Mekonos, NuvoAir, and Dopavision. She is based out of Basel, Switzerland

Sunny Kumar, Partner, Informed Ventures
Sunny Kumar is a Partner at Informed Ventures, where he primarily invests in early-stage companies deploying emerging technologies to transform healthcare delivery, including lead investments in Medable, Deep 6 AI, and Osso VR. Sunny is a physician as well as a published medical researcher with a focus on applying informatics and artificial intelligence to translational medicine in the fields of neurosurgery and gene therapy. He is a serial entrepreneur and most recently founded a company to reduce readmissions for high-risk patients with chronic diseases using voice-enabled natural language processing technology. Sunny received a BS in Molecular Biology from Yale University, an MD from Stanford University School of Medicine, and an MBA from Stanford University Graduate School of Business.