President, Biovista
Aris is Co-Founder and serves as President of Biovista, the Big Data/AI drug repositioning and precision medicine pioneer. Aris has helped lead the creation and positioning of Project Prodigy, the breakthrough Big Data/AI platform that is based on recombining knowledge to build new solutions. He has negotiated and closed relevant deals with well-known organizations, including Hewlett Packard Enterprise, Pfizer, Novartis, Astellas, BiogenIdec, the FDA, and a number of Patient Advocacy Groups. Aris has extensive operational and M&A experience. Prior to Biovista, he was SVP, Research and Business Development, at Upstate (acquired by Serologicals) and helped co-found three healthcare companies which achieved significant growth and exits: Cellzome (acquired by GSK), Anadys (acquired by Roche), and RheoGene (acquired by Intrexon). Aris also had an academic and administrative appointment at the Wharton School, where he was an Assistant Professor (Adjunct).
He also served as the first elected Chairperson of the Jefferson Corner Group Fund I, an angel investor group in Virginia. Aris has guest lectured at Columbia Business School, George Washington, and the University of Auckland Business School. Aris authored the monthly Industry Trends review column for Nature Biotechnology, and he is the only author to date whose collected works were published by the journal as a single dedicated volume. He has written about 90 papers and book chapters, and received the Honeywell Futurist Award (HFA) in 1986, while a 3rd year undergraduate student. Aris received his Ph.D. in biochemistry from the University of Cambridge, U.K, and did post-doctoral research under Professor Sir Leszek Borysiewicz, ex Vice Chancellor of the University of Cambridge.