NABIHA SAKLAYEN is CEO & co-founder of Cellino, where her work focuses on scaling up the production of personalized cells. Her team is building the first closed-loop system to make customized cells accessible to every human. This technique will widen access to patients in need of new cells—such as blood cells, neurons, and skin cells—to treat an array of diseases that affect large portions of our global population.

Nabiha has published peer-reviewed articles in the field of pulsed-laser delivery to cells. She was selected as a Pioneer in MIT Tech Review’s 35 Innovators under 35 list for her patented invention in cellular laser editing and was a 2019 Forbes 30 under 30 awardee for healthcare.

Nabiha received her Ph.D. in Physics from Harvard University as a Howard Hughes Medical Institute International Fellow. She is also the inaugural Tory Burch Foundation Fellow in Genomics at the Innovative Genomics Institute led by Nobel Laureate Dr. Jennifer Doudna.

Nabiha thrives at the intersection of different disciplines and cultures. She is experiencing firsthand that innovating at the convergence of disparate fields and perspectives creates the potential to solve humanity’s most significant healthcare challenges. Nabiha’s dedication to building therapies accessible to all humans comes from her multicultural upbringing: she was born in Saudi Arabia to Bangladeshi parents and grew up in Germany and Sri Lanka.

She is keen to see the diversification of STEM leadership within her lifetime and launched an education program (iamascientist.info) in all fifty states to inspire the next generation of diverse STEM leaders. Nabiha has dedicated her career to converging different disciplines and building leadership that reflects our society to give humanity the best chance at solving the toughest human health challenges of our lifetime.