Rick Klausner is an award-winning scientist, former executive director of the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation and an entrepreneur. Cell and molecular biologist Klausner was also director of the US National Cancer Institute from 1999-2001 and currently serves as CEO at biotech Lyell Immunopharma working with cell-based technology. He has also co-founded three US healthcare startups to date, Juno Therapeutics in 2013, MindStrong Health in 2014 and GRAIL in 2015. In 2021, he participated as an investor in the $48m Series A round of Dutch cell-based meat startup Meatable which leverages pluripotent stem cells for the first time in foodtech.