Sophia Lugo 

Sophia Lugo is CEO and Chairman of Radar Therapeutics, developing the world’s most precise and powerful genetic medicines with their novel RADAR platform, the first truly programmable genetic medicine that can read a cell’s full RNA profile and only activate in the right cells, at the right time. She founded the company alongside Dr Eerik Kaseniit (Stanford-MIT synthetic biologist), Prof Jim Collins of MIT (“Father of Synthetic Biology”), and Prof Xiaojing Gao of Stanford (NIH Rising Star investigator). Under her leadership, RADAR has been recognized with awards from J&J, Eli Lilly, Abbvie, Amgen, Wacker CDMO and Science Magazine as top innovation with translational potential of the year. Sophia is also an executive committee member and board director of the International Alliance for mRNA Medicine, representing 90+ mRNA companies globally. She’s received San Francisco Business Times’ 40 under 40, Biocom Catalyst Award for top 10 disruptors of life sciences under 40, National Hispanic Institute Person of the Year, and Mendoza Impact Founder of the Year awards, and been featured on many top podcasts for the life sciences industry, including “Business of Biotech,” “The Biotech Hub,” “She Runs Biotech,” “Biocentury’s Drug Development Disco,” and more.

Before founding Radar, Lugo held strategy and product roles at BGI Genomics’ Health Division and Ventures Incubator, the Boston Consulting Group, the U.S. Surgeon General’s Office, and the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, where she contributed to pandemic response strategy and global vaccine deployment planning.  Lugo received a bachelor's from Harvard, a master's from Tsinghua University (Schwarzman Scholars program), and an MBA from Stanford.