We are building next-generation SiFA chemistry to advance scalable, matched radiotheranostics for patients with cancer

Our team

• Nick Slavin

  Co-Founder and CEO

  Fuzionaire Tx

  Nick Slavin

  Co-Founder and CEO

  Fuzionaire Tx

  Mr. Slavin is the founding CEO of Fuzionaire and Fuzionaire Theranostics. His mission is to create a better and more hopeful future. Through the work of Fuzionaire, he is leveraging the power of scientific breakthroughs to solve some of the world’s biggest challenges at scale. Outside of Fuzionaire, Mr. Slavin is the founder and chairman of the Slavin Family Foundation, whose fellowships support some of the world’s top student entrepreneurs, and the founder of EES Ventures, a seed-stage venture capital firm. With Nova Spivack, Mr. Slavin is also a co-founder of the Arch Mission Foundation (AMF), a nonprofit creating repositories of human knowledge and biology in space. AMF launched the first permanent library in solar orbit in February 2018 in the glove box of Elon Musk’s Tesla Roadster, which was the payload for SpaceX’s Falcon Heavy test flight. In 2019, AMF landed the Lunar Library on the Moon. Previously, Mr. Slavin spent six years at top-ranked law firm Skadden Arps, focusing on public and private mergers and acquisitions. He holds a BA from Yale, magna cum laude and Phi Beta Kappa, where he founded his first company and graduated at 19, and a JD from Harvard Law School.

• Christopher Waldmann PhD

  Chief Scientific Officer

  Fuzionaire Tx

  Christopher Waldmann, PhD

  Chief Scientific Officer

  Fuzionaire Tx

  Dr. Waldmann is a radiopharmacist and scientist with more than a decade of experience in radiopharmaceutical manufacturing and development. As a postdoc at UCLA’s Crump Institute for Molecular Imaging, Dr. Waldmann invented the HetSiFA® technology in collaboration with the laboratory of Nobel Laureate Robert H. Grubbs at Caltech. The invention constitutes the scientific basis of Fuzionaire Theranostics. He previously was the Head of Radiochemistry at the University Medical Center Mainz, Germany, where he manufactured radiopharmaceuticals for diagnostic and therapeutic applications. Dr. Waldmann continues to be an advisor to the University Medical Center and holds a scientific affiliation there. His research focuses on the development of radiopharmaceuticals for theranostic applications in oncology. He is the author of a chapter in the textbook Molecular Imaging in Oncology, and his work has been published in leading academic journals including Theranostics, PNAS and Nature.

• Thomas Singleton PhD

  Vice President, Chemistry

  Fuzionaire Tx

  Thomas Singleton, PhD

  Vice President, Chemistry

  Fuzionaire Tx

  Dr. Singleton is Vice President of Chemistry at Fuzionaire Theranostics, overseeing chemistry-related operations. He also is a Research Associate at the Montreal Neurological Institute (The Neuro). He previously held postdoctoral fellowships at The Neuro, where he developed novel radiopharmaceuticals for PET imaging, and at the University of Manchester, where he developed molecular machine catalysts. In Manchester, he was a Royal Society Newton International Fellow with Prof. Dave Leigh. He received an Honours BSc from Trent University in 2009 and a PhD from McGill University in Materials Chemistry in 2015. Dr. Singleton's areas of experience include synthetic organic synthesis, radiochemistry, material sciences, photochemistry, and optics. He is the co-inventor of three patents and co-author of 12 peer-reviewed publications.

• Bethany Cates

  Director, Operations; Secretary

  Fuzionaire Tx

  Bethany Cates

  Director, Operations; Secretary

  Fuzionaire Tx

  Ms. Cates is Fuzionaire’s founding corporate secretary, director of operations, and executive assistant. Outside of Fuzionaire, she is executive director of the Slavin Family Foundation and director of operations of EES Ventures, a venture capital firm. Previously, Ms. Cates managed digital marketing and research at Austin-based communications strategy firm Influence Opinions, and held alumni relations and communications roles at The John Cooper School and Texas Exes, the University of Texas alumni association. Ms. Cates holds a BA from the University of Texas at Austin.

• Li Boynton

  Board of Directors

  Fuzionaire Tx

  Li Boynton

  Board of Directors

  Fuzionaire Tx

  Ms. Boynton is an investor with a decade of experience in healthcare investing. She was most recently at JPMorgan Asset Management as a biopharma analyst in the U.S. Equity Research Group from 2017-2024 investing in biotechnology, pharmaceuticals, and specialty pharmaceuticals investments across a broad range of US portfolios. Prior to joining JPMorgan, she was an associate at HCRoyalty, a healthcare private equity firm, and an equity research associate at Guggenheim Partners, where she worked under Tony Butler covering the pharmaceutical and biotechnology sectors. Ms. Boynton holds a B.S. from Yale in Molecular, Cellular and Developmental Biology and completed her research thesis in Biomedical Engineering, where she investigated inflammatory disease models using proteomics methods. Ms. Boynton's interest in bringing biotechnology into the world to solve global issues at scale goes far back, when she invented a biosensor at the age of 16 that could identify water contamination rapidly and cheaply for use in both developed and developing countries. For her research, she was awarded the top pre-college science award in the world, the Intel International Young Scientist Award, which selects the top scientist among 7 million participants, and invited by the Obamas to attend the State of the Union address as a special guest of the President.

• Nova Spivack

  Co-Founder

  Fuzionaire Tx

  Nova Spivack

  Co-Founder

  Fuzionaire Tx

  Mr. Spivack is a serial entrepreneur, technology futurist, and co-founder of the in house incubator of Stanford Research Institute (SRI) and Sarnoff Laboratories, which launched SIRI (acquired by Apple). He is the founder and CEO of the early stage science and technology incubator, Magical, and is co-founder and chairman of the Arch Mission Foundation. Previously, Mr. Spivack was CEO of Bottlenose, a leader in real-time data analytics. He founded Radar Networks in 2003, business incubator Lucid Ventures in 2001, and in 1994 he co-founded EarthWeb, Inc., one of the first web start-ups (record-breaking IPO in 1998) and spinout Dice.com (IPO in 2007). He is also a co-founder or early investor in The Daily Dot, Klout (acquired by Lithium), and a number of applied and life science companies including Space Adventures and Cambrian Genomics. Mr. Spivack is an inventor on nearly 100 granted and pending patents.

• Takeo Morooka MD, MPH

  Co-Founder, FRIT

  Fuzionaire Tx

  Takeo Morooka, MD, MPH

  Co-Founder, FRIT

  Fuzionaire Tx

  Dr. Morooka, a physician executive with expertise in health policy and commercial diplomacy in healthcare, is Co-Founder of Fuzionaire Radioisotope Technologies KK (FRIT), Fuzionaire Diagnostics' affiliate in Japan. In recent years, he has founded several companies, including PH Consulting Ltd., a Tokyo based health policy and management advisory firm, and Japan Medical Isotope Technology Development K.K. (JAMIT), a radiopharmaceutical technology company. Previously, Dr. Morooka held managerial positions of increasing responsibility at organizations including MSD (known as Merck in the US and Canada), where he was Executive Director, Head of Health Policy; Covidien, where he was Vice President, Medical Affairs and Government Affairs; International University of Health and Welfare; World Health Organization; and Ministry of Health, Labour and Welfare of Japan. He earned his MD from Kyoto University and MPH from Harvard School of Public Health. Dr. Morooka has been registered to practice medicine in Japan since 1994 and is a plastic surgeon by training.

• Alexey Kostikov PhD

  R&D Partner; Advisory Board

  McGill

  Alexey Kostikov, PhD

  R&D Partner; Advisory Board

  McGill

  Alexey Kostikov is an Associate Professor of Neurology and Neurosurgery at McGill University and the Montreal Neurological Institute-Hospital, also called the Neuro, where he focuses on developing novel positron emission tomography (PET) radiotracers for in vivo imaging of neurological biomarkers and improving the efficiency of radiolabeling procedures. Prof. Kostikov played a key role in developing silicon-fluoride acceptors (SiFA) for PET imaging that have progressed to clinical trials. He co-heads the ongoing collaborative research between Fuzionaire Tx and McGill, developing Fuzionaire Tx’s HetSiFA® library and HetSiFA-based cancer theranostics and ¹⁸F-labeled PET tracers for brain imaging. At the Neuro, he is also involved in the operations of the PET/cyclotron core facility that offers an extensive library of PET radiotracers to the neuroscience research community at McGill and across the province of Quebec.

• Jean-Philip Lumb PhD

  R&D Partner; Advisory Board

  McGill

  Jean-Philip Lumb, PhD

  R&D Partner; Advisory Board

  McGill

  Dr. Lumb is an Associate Professor of Chemistry at McGill University, where he was awarded a Fessenden Professorship in 2018. With a research focus on bio-inspired synthesis and catalysis, Dr. Lumb co-heads the ongoing collaborative research between Fuzionaire Tx and McGill developing Fuzionaire Tx’s HetSiFA® library and HetSiFA-based cancer theranostics. Dr. Lumb is the 2019 Keith Fagnou Award winner from the Canadian Society of Chemistry, a Thousand Talents Program Recipient from the Shaanxi Province in China, and recipient of Young Investigator Awards from the Quebec Province, the Thieme Editorial Board, and the Global Green Chemistry Center at York University. He is a member of the Editorial Advisory Board for the journal Chem and a Chapter Editor for the Science of Synthesis book series. Dr. Lumb began his career pursuing a PhD at the University of California, Berkeley with Dirk Trauner and as an NIH postdoctoral fellow at Stanford University with Barry Trost.

• Pedro Brugarolas PhD

  Advisory Board

  Harvard Medical School

  Pedro Brugarolas, PhD

  Advisory Board

  Harvard Medical School

  Dr. Brugarolas is an Assistant Professor of Radiology at Harvard Medical School and the Gordon Center for Medical Imaging at Massachusetts General. His research centers around the development of new small molecule PET radioligands for neurological diseases and immunoPET. Dr. Brugarolas and his team recently showed that potassium channels can be targeted for imaging demyelinated lesions in multiple sclerosis (MS) and traumatic brain injury, an approach that is now being evaluated in clinical trials. He is a recipient of the Jordi Folch-Pi Award from the American Society for Neurochemistry.

• Jacob Hooker PhD

  Advisory Board

  Harvard Medical School

  Jacob Hooker, PhD

  Advisory Board

  Harvard Medical School

  Dr. Hooker is a Professor of Radiology at Harvard Medical School and Director of Radiochemistry at the Martinos Center for Biomedical Imaging. He is also the Phyllis and Jerome Lyle Rappaport MGH Research Scholar and an Associate Neuroscientist at Massachusetts General Hospital, and an associate editor for ACS Chemical Neuroscience. Dr. Hooker’s lab has the mission of accelerating the study of the living human brain and nervous system through development and application of molecular imaging agents. The lab has developed and patented several imaging technologies for neuroscience, including a first-in-class radiotracer for neuroepigenetic imaging. Dr. Hooker was an inaugural recipient of the Talented 12 Award by C&E News, was named a Kavli Fellow by the National Academy of Sciences, has received a NARSAD Independent Investigator Award, and was awarded the Presidential Early Career Award for Scientists and Engineers by President Obama.

• Klaus Kopka PhD

  Advisory Board

  Technical University Dresden

  Klaus Kopka, PhD

  Advisory Board

  Technical University Dresden

  Professor Kopka, a radiopharmaceutical chemist, holds a full professorship in Bioinorganic and Radiopharmaceutical Chemistry at Technical University Dresden, Germany, and is Director of the Institute of Radiopharmaceutical Cancer Research at Helmholtz-Zentrum Dresden-Rossendor (HZDR), Germany. Previously, he held a full professorship at Ruprecht-Karls-University of Heidelberg and was head of the Division of Radiopharmaceutical Chemistry at the German Cancer Research Center, DKFZ, in Heidelberg. Since 2012, Prof. Kopka has been the chairman of the radiochemistry and radiopharmacy committee (AGRR) of the German Association of Nuclear Medicine (DGN). His research applies medicinal chemistry to radiopharmaceutical drug development, including the development of novel radionuclide theranostics targeting the prostate-specific membrane antigen (PSMA). Professor Kopka is a co-inventor of the fluorine-18 radiotracer PSMA-1007, or Radelumin®, and the lutetium-177 radioligand PSMA-617, or Pluvicto®, the first approved PSMA-targeting radioligand for prostate cancer therapy. He is also a guest editor of several special issues with topics in the field radiopharmaceutical sciences and a co-inventor on numerous patents. His scientific output includes 269 publications to date, corresponding to 13,144 citations (h-index 57) (Scopus, 16-July-2024).

• Dennis Liotta PhD

  Advisory Board

  Emory

  Dennis Liotta, PhD

  Advisory Board

  Emory

  Dr. Liotta is the Samuel Candler Dobbs Professor of Chemistry at Emory University and Executive Director of the Emory Institute for Drug Development. Through his discoveries, Dr. Liotta has helped to transform HIV/AIDS from a death sentence to a chronic infection. Over 90% of all of the HIV-infected persons in the United States have taken one of the drugs he invented. Dr. Liotta is an inventor on 75 issued US patents, many of which cover the antiviral and anticancer drugs and drug candidates he has discovered. He is the co-founder of numerous companies, two of which were acquired by Gilead Pharmaceuticals. He is recognized as one of the premier discoverers of novel therapeutics in the United States, having been an inventor of 10 FDA approved therapeutics including Epivir, Combivir, Trizivir, Epzicom, Epivir-HBV, Emtriva, Truvada, Atripla, Complera and Stribid.

• Douglas Scherr MD

  Advisory Board

  Weill Cornell

  Douglas Scherr, MD

  Advisory Board

  Weill Cornell

  Dr. Scherr is a Professor of Urology and the Clinical Director of Urologic Oncology at the Weill Medical College of Cornell University. Dr. Scherr’s clinical focus is the treatment of urologic malignancies – in particular, the treatment of prostate cancer, bladder cancer, kidney cancer, and testicular cancers, as well as genitourinary and retroperitoneal sarcomas. He was the first physician at Cornell to perform a robotic prostatectomy, and travels nationally and internationally teaching the procedure to urologic surgeons. He has been active in the development of optical coherence tomography and its application to urologic imaging, and patented and developed the concept of “multiphoton endoscopy,” which utilizes high-speed laser energy to create high quality microscopic images of human tissue.

• Kristin Swanson PhD

  Advisory Board

  Mayo Clinic

  Kristin Swanson, PhD

  Advisory Board

  Mayo Clinic

  Dr. Swanson is a Professor and Vice Chair for Research in the Department of Neurologic Surgery at Mayo Clinic. She is also Director of the Mathematical Neuro-Oncology Laboratory and Co-Director of the Precision Neurotherapeutics Innovation Program at Mayo Clinic. Dr. Swanson is a quantitative cancer researcher (mathematical oncologist) whose research lab has pioneered the burgeoning field of Mathematical Neuro-Oncology, developing patient-specific mathematical models of glioma to assess and predict disease course and optimize treatment. The lab works with clinical and research teams at Mayo Clinic to bring these innovations to the clinic while identifying new predictive models. Dr. Swanson’s research has been supported through funding by the NIH, numerous foundations, the James D. Murray Endowed Chair at the University of Washington, TGen, and the Mayo Clinic.