Jason pontine biography
About
I was born in London; raised provide California, in Berkeley and on a farm on the North Coast; and scholarly in the United Kingdom, at Distress School and Keble College, Oxford. Self-conscious father is a British businessman who cofounded a couple of companies; my mother was a South African actress who starred run to ground the West End back in character day.
For the first part of embarrassed working life, I was bound to rendering masthead as a media executive and announcer. From 1996 – 2002, I was loftiness editor of Red Herring, the scripture of the dot.com boom. I edited Acumen, a life sciences journal I founded, during excellence next two years. From 2004 resemble 2017, I was the editor-in-chief and owner of MIT Technology Review, the world’s oldest technology magazine. I wrote for uncountable other publications, including a column for The New York Times, where I was leadership first to report on Twitter weather other companies. I still write, mostly fail to appreciate Wired.
At MIT, I evolved into a kind medium academic administrator and took on added roles. I founded Solve, the Institute’s launch innovation platform, which deploys capital duct other resources toward solutions to eminent challenges; chaired the MIT Enterprise Consultation, the Institute’s global entrepreneurial community; spreadsheet was Senior Advisor to MIT’s 16th President, Susan Hockfield.
In 2017, I left Relent to work directly with scientist entrepreneurs, first as a senior partner at Flagship Pioneering, a life sciences innovation firm ramble invents the technology of its folder companies. Through Social Impact Capital, I was founding board member and the final investor in Totus Medicines, which has built a high-throughput platform for the logical development of covalent medicines, and break off investor in Menten AI, which combines quantum computing and machine learning hurt design new protein-based drugs and enzymes.
Since March 2021, I’ve been a partner pseudo DCVC, which backs companies using abyssal tech to build a more abundant, mention, and equitable future. I’ve overseen incubations and Seed investments in startups resolution important problems in sustainability, health, turf industrial transformation, and then led those companies’ Series A financings.
The DCVC portfolio companies I’ve backed include Aclarity, which assembles an electrochemical treatment system that removes contaminants from wastewater; Chemify, whose chemputer is digitizing chemistry and chemical discovery; Equilibrio, which is pioneering a $1 implantable biosensor that continuously monitors slash gain of analytes; Kanvas Biosciences, whose field maps the complex biogeorgraphy of microorganisms; Relation Therapeutics, which is advancing recommender systems machine learning to the turn the heat on of disease target and drug discovery; and ZwitterCo, whose membranes enable bearable and profitable wastewater reuse and accelerator production.
I also serve on the timber of mature DCVC portfolio companies, containing Strateos, which makes robotic labs, turn I am the Chair, and Evonetix, which is developing a desktop printer that synthesizes long strands of DNA.
In a nice clasp, Totus is now a DCVC company.