Martin Fuchs, Chief Executive Officer, brings more than 40 years of industry experience. He has held senior product development roles in diagnostics, most recently in clinical microbiology at Accelerate Diagnostics and AdvanDx. He is the co-founder of three companies including CellPoint Diagnostics and Active Impulse Systems. He began his career at Waters, a world leader in bioanalytical instrumentation. He holds two Engineering degrees from MIT and is an inventor on more than 30 issued US patents.

Dr. Thompson comes to Metfora with more than ten years of experience in molecular diagnostics, most recently at HTG Molecular Diagnostics, where she served as Vice President of Innovation and Vice President of Research. 

Dr. Thompson has an extensive background in cancer genetics and diagnostics, RNA expression profiling, biostatistics, machine learning, and AI. She is an author of multiple peer-reviewed publications and is an inventor on several patents. A graduate of Michigan State University, she earned a Ph.D. in Biological Sciences from the University of Cambridge. 

Dr. Rafikova has worked in cardiovascular and pulmonary diseases for over twenty years. She is a translational researcher who focuses on precision medicine. Her research interests include sex-specific therapeutic approaches in pulmonary arterial hypertension (PAH), a deadly disease with no effective therapy. Her research team investigates biomarker-driven approaches to identify early-stage disease using multiple preclinical models and patient samples. 

Dr. Rafikova is also dedicated to the design and test of unique peptide-based therapeutics that, in contrast to the classical “small molecule” inhibitors, specifically attenuate disease-driven signaling without affecting the normal physiological function of the protein. Five active patent applications aimed at treating different cardiovascular diseases have resulted from this important work.

Dr. Rafikov has been involved in the field of cardiopulmonary diseases since 2000. He has published over 60 papers in prominent scientific journals and holds more than 10 patents for his inventions. With a background in chemistry, he specializes in small molecules, peptides, and biological therapeutics. Currently, Dr. Rafikov plays an essential role in developing new diagnostic tools with the Metfora Diagnostics team, utilizing his leadership and expertise in metabolite chemistry, disease conditions, and data analysis.

Dr. Simon is a highly experienced cardiologist with a specialization in pulmonary hypertension, advanced heart failure, and heart transplantation. He has a keen interest in developing new therapies for pulmonary hypertension and exploring the intricacies of right-sided heart failure in pulmonary hypertension (PH). This condition is often associated with poor outcomes and is known to occur in another type of heart failure called heart failure with preserved ejection fraction or HFpEF. While the heart functions normally in HFpEF, the stiffening of the heart and blood vessels causes difficulty in breathing. Dr. Simon's background in bioengineering and heart biomechanics has enabled him to design and direct several clinical trials of new medications and devices for pulmonary hypertension and heart failure. 

Dr. Knox is a pulmonary medicine specialist who has studied lung immunology and biomarker discovery for over 20 years. He is a tenured professor in the Department of Internal Medicine – Phoenix at the University of Arizona College of Medicine – Tucson and also serves as the Associate Dean for Faculty Affairs and Career Development. Dr. Knox's clinical expertise focuses on lung diseases such as sarcoidosis, fungal diagnostics, and immunologic/fibrotic lung disease. He uses bronchoalveolar lavage (BAL) as a tool for biomarker and gene expression studies to correlate the microbiome/virome and inflammatory responses to clinical phenotypes such as HIV, cytomegalovirus (CMV), endemic fungal pathogens, and rheumatologic lung disease.

Peter Nestler, PhD has over 25 years of experience in academic research and pharmaceutical lead discovery focused on the interplay of disciplines and technologies in the context of understanding and modulating biological processes. He has served in leadership roles since 1995 in academia and industry. He held a faculty position at Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory and has led drug discovery project teams and medicinal chemistry groups. At the global level, he was heavily engaged in the Aventis Chemical Biology Initiative as the leader of the Chemical Biology Proteases platform. He has contributed to a multitude of therapeutic area projects, such as antithrombotics, diabetes, degenerative and inflammatory joint diseases. He has delivered various novel lead drug compounds to the Sanofi pipeline, such as a Factor Xa and a dF508-CFTR corrector.

Dr. Ledford specializes in studying the role of endogenous lung proteins and the mechanisms by which they mediate various states of lung inflammation, pathogen infection, and lung disease progression using pre-clinical animal models. Her translational research investigates obstructive lung disease and dysfunction of innate immunity in asthma and respiratory infections. With over a decade of experience mentoring and training medical students, graduate students, postdocs, and fellows, Dr. Ledford has a strong history of collaborative co-publications in the field of lung function and asthma.  She is a co-founder of and serves as the Chief Scientific Officer of RaeSedo, Inc and a co-founder at Aspiro Therapeutics. 

With a distinguished academic background, including a PhD in Management Science and Information Systems from Rutgers University, Dr. Ge stands as a leading expert in the field.  Among his research specialties are data mining, machine learning, recommender systems, and business analytics. Awarded the Dean's Research Award in 2020 and the prestigious NSF CAREER Award in 2019, he has been recognized for his outstanding achievements. He has published prolifically in refereed journals and conference proceedings, such as IEEE TKDE, ACM TOIS, ACM SIGKDD, and ICIS. His research has been supported in part by the National Science Foundation, National Institutes of Health (NIH), ORAU and UoA.

John Achoukian serves as health economics advisor. He has more than 15 years of experience in the healthcare industry, including the technology, health plan, inpatient, and outpatient provider arenas. 

John implemented a Health Information Exchange (HIE) solution in the provider space across multiple markets, contributing to opportunities for improving penetration to new and existing outpatient provider channels. He has developed an understanding of the consumer and provider healthcare experience throughout his career. He earned a Bachelor of Arts in Political Science from Wayne State University in Detroit, Michigan, and a Master of Healthcare Innovation from Arizona State University.