CEO
Marc Tessier-Lavigne is a pioneering neuroscientist, biotechnology executive, and academic leader. Marc currently serves as CEO of Xaira Therapeutics, an AI drug discovery startup that made headlines in early 2024 when it emerged from stealth mode with $1 billion in funding.
Marc received undergraduate degrees from McGill University and from Oxford University, where he was a Rhodes Scholar, and a Ph.D. from University College London (UCL). After postdoctoral work at UCL and at Columbia University, he established his laboratory at the University of California, San Francisco, where he was named an investigator of the Howard Hughes Medical Institute. He later moved to Stanford, where he was the Susan B. Ford Professor in the School of Humanities and Sciences, and then to Genentech Inc., where he served as Chief Scientific Officer and Executive Vice President of Research, as well as running his laboratory. He joined The Rockefeller University in 2011 as President and Carson Family Professor, and as Head of the Laboratory of Brain Development and Repair. Marc served as Stanford University’s 11th president from 2016 to 2023.
Marc’s contributions have been recognized by numerous prizes and honors, including the 2020 Gruber Neuroscience Prize and his election as a Member of the National Academy of Sciences (USA), the National Academy of Medicine (USA) and the American Philosophical Society, and as a Fellow of the Royal Society (UK), the Royal Society of Canada, the Academy of Medical Sciences (UK), the American Association for the Advancement of Science and the American Academy of Arts and Sciences.