Our people work across disciplines to advance first-and-best-in-class therapeutics, together.

Matt Maisak, Ph.D. serves as Chief Operating Officer, Roivant Platforms. Dr. Maisak joined the Roivant team in 2018. Prior to leading the Roivant Platforms, Dr. Maisak was a key member of the Axovant business development team, where he led the in-licensing efforts for the GM1 and GM2 gangliosidoses gene therapy programs from the University of Massachusetts. Prior to Roivant, Dr. Maisak held several strategic roles in Global Operations at Roche Diagnostics, where he worked across regulatory and manufacturing strategy.

Dr. Maisak earned a doctor of philosophy from the Max Planck Institute working under Dr. Axel Borst. During this time, he investigated the role single neuronal subtypes play in the computation of direction selective motion vision. His work was published in Nature and Current Biology and featured in popular science media such as National Geographic (Geo) and Bayerischer Rundfunk. Dr. Maisak studied medicine at Yale University School of Medicine.

Throughout his career, Iván has acted as a consultant on target and drug discovery for a number of start-ups and biotech firms. In previous roles, at Roivant Discovery, Cedilla Therapeutics, Merck, AstraZeneca, Sanofi, and Novartis, Iván established and managed translational chemical biology and proteomics teams, supporting target discovery and validation, and lead finding initiatives across disease areas, target classes, and modalities.

Iván holds a Ph.D. in organic chemistry from the Universidade da Coruña, Spain, and earned an Executive Certificate in innovation from MIT Sloan School of Management. He completed postdoctoral work at the Institute of Chemistry & Cell Biology of Harvard Medical School (now the Broad Institute of MIT and Harvard), as National Cancer Institute Initiative for Chemical Genetics Research Fellow, and at the Boston College chemistry department.

Jason brings more than 17 years of drug discovery and medicinal chemistry expertise to Covant Therapeutics.

Before joining Covant, Jason was a recognized leader in Merck’s global discovery chemistry department, where he held positions of increasing responsibility, most recently as director of chemical biology, leading teams across all levels of discovery, including target identification, target validation, lead identification, and optimization. Jason was a founding member of Merck’s chemical biology group and a co-lead of Merck’s targeted protein degradation group. Jason contributed to the discovery of five development candidates, and three INDs and was a co-inventor in the discovery of the beta-lactamase inhibitor Relebactam.

Jason has authored over 30 peer-reviewed journal articles and holds 12 patents spanning a diverse set of therapeutic areas. He holds a bachelor of arts degree in biology and a bachelor of science degree in chemistry from the University of Massachusetts in Amherst, Mass., where he was a recognized Howard Hughes Undergraduate Research Fellow, a doctor of philosophy degree in organic chemistry from the University of Arizona in Tucson, Az. and a National Institute of Health Ruth L. Kirschstein National Research Service Award Postdoctoral Fellowship at Boston College in Chestnut Hill, Mass.

Shannon brings over a decade of experience advancing innovative therapies from concept to clinical success across multiple therapeutic areas, including metabolism, autoimmunity, oncology, and ophthalmology. In her previous leadership roles at Johnson and Johnson Innovative Medicine and Jazz Pharmaceuticals, she guided several multidisciplinary project teams, often including external collaborators, at diverse phases of R&D spanning from the early stages of target identification and validation through late-stage pivotal trial execution.

Shannon earned her Ph.D. in Biomedical Sciences from Baylor College of Medicine in Houston, TX, where she developed a strong foundation in molecular and cellular biology, identifying a novel tumor suppressor function of a nuclear receptor family. Her research and collaborative skills were honed as a postdoctoral fellow at the Institute for Diabetes, Obesity and Metabolism of the University of Pennsylvania while studying transcriptional and epigenomic regulation of metabolic tissues and disease.