Noubar Afeyan

Noubar Afeyan (Western Նուպար Աֆէեան; born in 1962) is an American-Canadian entrepreneur, inventor, and philanthropist.

He is best known for co-founding the biotechnology company Moderna, through his venture capital firm, Flagship Pioneering, and for co-founding humanitarian projects such as Aurora Prize and The Future Armenian.

As of November 2021, his net worth is estimated at $3.3 billion.

Afeyan was born to Armenian parents in Beirut, Lebanon in 1962.

His grandfather survived the Armenian genocide.

Talking about his background, Afeyan said: "One of the only unfortunate advantages Armenians have had by having gone through a genocide and having spread around the world is that we do have an experience of escaping and of immigrating and of constantly restarting."

His family fled Lebanon in 1975, during the civil war there.

He graduated from Loyola High School in Montreal in 1978.

He received his B.Eng.

in chemical engineering from McGill University in 1983 and then moved to the US and earned a Ph.D. in biochemical engineering from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) in 1987.

He was the first Ph.D. graduate from MIT's Center for Bioprocess Engineering, at the time the only institution with that degree program.

Afeyan started his first biotechnology company in 1987, just a few days before Black Monday, and founded or co-founded five more companies within ten years.

Afeyan is married to Anna (born Gunnardottir), a Swedish-born engineer who moved to the US in 1988.

They have four children, and currently reside in Lexington, Massachusetts.

Afeyan has authored numerous scientific papers.

He has patented over 100 inventions.

In 1988, he founded PerSeptive Biosystems and served as its CEO.

The company's annual revenues grew to $100 million and in 1998 was acquired by PerkinElmer/Applera and became CBO of Applera.

There he oversaw the creation of Celera Genomics.

Afeyan sits on the boards of the MIT Corporation, the Boston Symphony Orchestra, and the Armenian General Benevolent Union (AGBU).

Afeyan has worked closely with other prominent Armenian diaspora philanthropists, most notably Ruben Vardanyan on projects related to Armenia.

Between 2000 and 2016 he was a senior lecturer at the MIT Sloan School of Management and is currently (as of 2020) a lecturer at Harvard Business School.

In July 2022, Afeyan was conferred with an honorary doctorate degree from Yerevan State University.

Afeyan is the founder and CEO of Flagship Pioneering, a venture capital company focused on biotechnology, in 2000.

The firm has "fostered the development of more than 100 scientific ventures, resulting in $20 billion in total value and over 500 patents."

According to the company website, Flagship Pioneering has "fostered the development of more than 100 scientific ventures resulting in $30 billion in aggregate value, thousands of patents and patent applications, and more than 50 drugs in clinical development."

Earlier, in 2001 Afeyan, Vardanyan and others launched the "Armenia 2020" initiative, which aimed to identify development prospects for Armenia until 2020.

It has since been expanded to 2031.

In 2005 Afeyan and Vardanyan met with Armenian president Robert Kocharyan to present the key directions of the project.

Afeyan had partnered with Vardanyan to establish Initiatives for Development of Armenia (IDeA), which according to the Armenian government, has between 2007 and 2017 implemented different projects with a total cost of $550 million.

He became a U.S. citizen in 2008.

Besides English, Afeyan speaks Western Armenian.

In 2008 Afeyan, Vardanyan and others co-founded the National Competitiveness Foundation of Armenia, a private-public partnership dedicated to promoting economic development in the country.

In 2009 Afeyan co-founded Moderna (formerly ModeRNA Therapeutics) and currently serves as its chairman.

As a member of its board, he met with Armenian Prime Minister Tigran Sargsyan in 2009 and 2012.

With Vardanyan and Vartan Gregorian, Afeyan co-founded the Aurora Humanitarian Initiative in 2015.

He owns over 2 million shares in the company; in 2018, Moderna had the biggest IPO in the biotech industry's history.

In 2021, Afeyan announced that Moderna would not enforce its patent rights against anyone using those patents to make COVID-19 vaccines.

By 2020 Afeyan had co-founded and developed 41 start-ups.

In total, he co-founded or helped build over 50 life science and technology startups.