Industry Veterans Join Forces with Manifold to Shape the Future of Life Sciences R&D

New leaders bring decades of combined experience in shaping tech in life sciences R&D

NEWTON, Mass., April 1, 2025 - Manifold, a leading AI-native Trusted Research Environment (TRE) for modern scientific collaboration, today welcomes a group of influential industry veterans to help shape the future of data and AI in life sciences R&D —both as commercial leaders to drive growth and as visionary customers to inform platform innovation.

The demand for speed and innovation has never been greater in the rapidly evolving landscape of life sciences R&D – with biological and clinical datasets of massive scale and complexity, multi-disciplinary and multi-party collaborations, and the promise of agentic AI. Legacy TREs have lagged behind. They struggle to align with modern enterprise cloud and data architectures. Their interfaces are outdated, failing to meet the expectations of users across varying technical skill levels. And, they have yet to deliver the transformative benefits of agentic AI seen in other industries. Manifold is tackling these challenges head-on.

To drive continued growth and innovation, Manifold is welcoming three seasoned leaders to the team:

Doug Cassidy joins as General Manager, Research Centers and Sites, having previously held leadership roles at Deep 6 AI, Ciox, and GE Healthcare. Doug brings over 25 years of experience in research technology and healthcare IT.

“Manifold is redefining how research centers and clinical sites operate by delivering intelligent infrastructure to power life sciences research. It’s a testament to the product and vision that the Broad Institute is collaborating with Manifold as an institute-wide research platform to enable their world-class research teams to move faster and more effectively. I’m excited to help bring that impact to the scientists and clinicians at institutions around the country who are driving discovery every day.” -Doug Cassidy, GM, Research Centers and Sites, Manifold

Sandeep Pawar, PhD joins as General Manager, Biopharma and CRO, having previously held leadership roles at DNAnexus, Verana Health, and TempusAI. Sandeep brings extensive experience in biopharma data strategy, AI-driven solutions to advance drug discovery and development, and impactful ecosystem partnerships.

“Manifold's AI-powered TRE has the potential to transform biomedical research by accelerating the path from data to insights. As I step into this new role, I’m eager to bring Manifold to more biopharma and CRO partners and expand collaborations that scale science and ultimately improve patient outcomes.” -Sandeep Pawar, PhD, GM, Biopharma and CRO

Nirav Amin, PhD joins as VP, Scientific Solutions, Biopharma and CRO, having previously held leadership roles at DNAnexus and Qiagen. Nirav brings deep expertise working with many biopharma organizations, helping build solutions that enable researchers to interact with complex multimodal data and enable the next generation of scientific insights. 

“Manifold has built a special blend of a modern interface with native AI functionality, coupled with strong collaborations with organizations shaping the future of precision medicine. I’m thrilled to continue helping teams break the silos around molecular data and advance scientific discovery through meaningful collaboration.” -Nirav Amin, PhD, VP, Scientific Solutions, Biopharma and CRO

And also thrilled to welcome a new customer and partner:

Matt Newman, Executive Vice President and General Manager at Champions Oncology, is one of Manifold’s newest customers, bringing 20 years of insight in the space to establishing a future-proof technology strategy for their new data business line. 

Champions Oncology’s strategy is to build the world’s most comprehensive biological dataset from a clinically relevant population of tumors. The baseline dataset of multi-omics data from its patient derived xenograft (PDX) and primary hematological banks includes whole cell proteomics & phospho-proteomics, whole exome sequencing, and RNA-seq data along with clinical patient data and treatment response data from standard of care agents. Additional multi-omics datasets are currently being generated in Cell Surface Proteomics and Functional Genomics.

“Our goal was to find a software solution that allowed us to best showcase our multi-omics data to our customers with a modern user interface and infrastructure.  We wanted to work with a partner that enabled us to license our data securely, but still allow the bioinformaticians and data scientists to get access in their own cloud environment with their favorite tools. Manifold’s TRE was the best fit to accomplish that today. I’m excited about the potential of this partnership and believe it will greatly enhance our team’s ability to deliver our baseline and dynamic multi-omic dataset to our customers.” - Matt Newman, EVP and GM at Champions Oncology

These leaders have helped shape some of the most widely used platforms in the field—and now, they’re helping shape what comes next at Manifold.

Connect with us to learn more about what’s ahead.