Science Lead, Intercept

Stripe•New York City, NY

About The Position

Intercept is looking for a strategic, execution-oriented life sciences operator to join our team. We are laser-focused on making sure the portfolio of broad-spectrum preventatives needed to radically reduce the burden of respiratory viruses exists. Our goal is to advance 2+ products that meet our target product profile through Phase 2. We make both grants and investments, using the most capital-efficient tool to advance our target product profile. This role will focus on sourcing and diligencing pipeline opportunities to select the most promising broad-spectrum preventatives that meet our target product profile (TPP), developing views on the most promising approaches, identifying new cutting edge areas of science, mapping key technical and clinical/regulatory bottlenecks, developing plans to de-risk them, and managing the grant/investment process from intake to diligence to award select to post-award monitoring. There will be a need to borrow from past product development experiences to expeditiously advance the portfolio, including mapping out known and new pathways for acceleration from discovery to FIH trials and to accelerate projects towards key discovery or product development inflection points. We need someone who can (1) evaluate the quality and value of the science for impact vs probability of success, and (2) zoom out to synthesize what that means for our capital deployment plan and long-term goals. A successful candidate will be action-oriented and comfortable working independently (vs. waiting to be told what to do) and a great communicator who can translate complex science for diverse audiences. Intercept is a small team; you'll work with the entire team, under Intercept’s Head of Science, many partners, and wear many hats. You'll own specific outcomes end-to-end and have a chance to contribute to BSP strategy over time.

Requirements

Must have a PhD or MD in immunology and/or infectious disease with 5+ years of post-grad research experience (biotech, pharma, VC, or consulting) experience
Demonstrated capacity to explore and evaluate a broad range of scientific topics and experience with scientific curation (e.g., oversight of a research portfolio, grant making experience, investment experience, etc.)
Experience with portfolio management, including portfolio construction and post-award management
Ability to translate scientific diligence into strategic investment recommendations and a coherent capital deployment view
Product development experience (and/or broad exposure via investing in or supporting companies)
Experience with project management from launch to completion / project quarterback with a high openness to getting hands dirty
Extremely self-directed, diligent, very fast learner, excellent communicator, very action oriented (vs talking about things)
Compelled by our mission to greatly reduce the burden of and risks from respiratory viruses
Public health / global health / biosecurity experience

Nice To Haves

Lead investments independently.
Grow into a more senior deal lead, owning deals from start to finish.
Shape capital deployment.
Contribute to our capital deployment plan informed by a clear POV of the most promising approaches.

Responsibilities

Expand the pipeline of BSP candidates.
Engage all networks (researchers, investors, founders, funders, etc.) to source new ideas and technologies.
Diligence pipeline opportunities.
Bring projects through early and deep / technical diligence: evaluating science quality, development plans, team, and fit against our TPP.
Develop points of view on technologies.
Contribute to publishing a POV for the 5-10 most promising approaches (i.e., siRNA, T-cell vaccine, innate immune stimulators) and identify the key 'gating datapoints' that would make us kill or double down on that approach and when we'll get that datapoint (or if there is a gap).
Build and maintain the CRM.
Help ensure our CRM captures ~all known projects, and we have a process to systematically learn about/capture the best new projects early.
Support our RFP and investment process.
Help publish our initial RFP, highlighting promising-but-underloved areas we're especially excited to fund.
Drive projects from intake through investment/grant execution.
Portfolio management.
Monitoring + how we help / accelerate post investment.
Help determine what would let the top projects in the field move 2x faster beyond funding.
Map demand-side bottlenecks.
Help map key stakeholders and address key evidence needs and bottlenecks across regulatory, clinical, recommendations, reimbursement and adoption/uptake.