Rodger Novak, MD
Co-Founder & Chairman

Rodger has served on our Board of Directors since Xap’s founding. He is a serial entrepreneur, long-time pharmaceutical and biotechnology senior executive. In 2013 Rodger co-founded CRISPR Therapeutics with Shaun Foy and Emmanuelle Charpentier, IPO’d the company in 2016 and led CRISPR as CEO until December 2017. Rodger still serves CRISPR as President and Chair of the Board. Before CRISPR, Rodger was Global Head Infectious Diseases at Sanofi, Paris, France. In 2006 Rodger co-founded Nabriva Therapeutics, an antibacterial development company in Vienna, Austria, where he worked as COO. Nabriva was a spin-out from Sandoz/Novartis, where Rodger acted as Vice-Head of the Antibiotic Research Institute. In addition to Xap and CRISPR, Rodger serves as Executive Chair of Matterhorn Biosciences and Econic Biosciences (co-founder). He is also a board member and co-founder of ERS Genomics and a Venture Partner at SR One.   

Rodger received his MD in Germany in 1993 and his medical license for the USA in 1994. He was a postdoctoral fellow at the Rockefeller University, the Skirball Institute, NYU Medical Center, and St Jude Children’s Research Hospital. In 2001, he was appointed as tenured Professor for Microbiology at the Vienna Biocenter, Austria. Rodger authored numerous publications, among them articles in Nature, Nature Medicine and Molecular Cell. He is also a co-inventor of several patents.