About Us

Ramanath Bhandari, MD, FASRS

Co-founder, CEO,
& Board Chairman

Dr. Bhandari co-founded RevOpsis Therapeutics in 2018 after seeing an orphan asset and platform that had the potential for outsized impact in the ophthalmic space. His passion is leveraging his interests in ophthalmology, research, and patient care to bring novel therapeutics to patients. Dr. Bhandari graduated from NYU School of Medicine in 2007 after completing the IRTA fellowship at the National Institute of Health. He completed his ophthalmology residency at State University of New York Downstate in Brooklyn, NY in 2011 and went on to complete a Vitreoretinal Surgery Fellowship at the University of Colorado, Denver in 2013. He is currently a practicing Vitreoretinal Surgeon, participating in multiple clinical trials.

Ramesh Bhatt, PhD

Chief Scientific Officer

Dr. Bhatt leads R&D for RevOpsis Therapeutics. He previously served as VP of Discovery, Biology, and Translational Research for Protagonist Therapeutics. Ramesh was also the founding scientist and research head at Janux Therapeutics, a novel antibody company currently developing T-cell–engaging bispecifics with greater clinical efficacy and safety. Dr. Bhatt has also served in numerous leadership positions for public and private research organizations. He holds a PhD from Stanford University Medical Center and was a postdoctoral researcher at Northwestern University Medical Center.

Ronil Patel

Chief Business Officer

Mr. Ronil Patel currently serves as Chief Business Officer at RevOpsis Therapeutics. Mr. Patel has over 15 years of experience in medical research, including biotech R&D, and global business development. He has been in ophthalmology since 2012 and has managed multiple clinical-stage assets that resulted in FDA approval, and are currently being commercialized in the US. Mr. Patel’s global business development experience involves in/out-licensing clinical-stage assets. He has executive leadership experience at both public and private companies and has been on teams that raised over $100 million in funding and exit deals valued at over $500 million. Mr. Patel holds a Master of Science degree with a specialization in Biotechnology from the Florida Institute of Technology.

Li Xu, PhD

Vice President of Discovery

She has 25+ years of experience in protein-based drug discovery. Previously, Dr. Xu was Research Director at Sea Lane Biotechnologies, Inc. She was the first person to prove the biologic function of surrogate light chain pairing with associated heavy chains and built unique synthetic human Surrobody libraries. She established the Surrobody technology platform for monospecific and bispecific therapeutics, which now supports the RevMod Platform. Dr. Xu received a BS in Virology from Wuhan University, an MS in Microbiology from Oregon State University, and a PhD in Microbiology from The University of Texas at Austin. She was a Postdoctoral Research Fellow in Immunology at The Scripps Research Institute.

Jeff Olson, MD

Co-founder & Board of Directors

Dr. Olson is an associate professor at the University of Colorado School of Medicine, Department of Ophthalmology. His practice focuses on the surgical and medical management of vitreoretinal diseases, including age-related macular degeneration (AMD) and diabetic retinopathy (DR). Dr. Olson’s research interests are in the development of novel treatments for AMD and DR. He received his medical degree from the University of Colorado School of Medicine, followed by a residency and vitreoretinal fellowship, vitreoretinal surgery, from the University of Colorado Anschutz Medical Campus.

Ram Palanki, PharmD

Board of Directors

Dr. Palanki serves as Executive Vice President of Commercial Strategy & Operations at REGENXBIO, a leader in AAV gene therapy, and is responsible for the planning, execution, and commercialization of their pipeline across the ophthalmology, central nervous system, and neuromuscular disease franchises.

He has nearly 20 years of experience in the development and commercialization of biopharmaceuticals and medical devices. Before joining REGENXBIO, Dr. Palanki was Senior Vice President of Commercial for the Americas at Santen Inc. Previously, he served as the executive team member leading the strategy and operations for pre-launch and global commercialization of a first-in-class biologic at ThromboGenics. Over the span of his career, Dr. Palanki has held roles of increasing responsibility at several small, mid-sized, and large companies, including the launch of LUCENTIS® at Genentech. He is an active board member and strategic advisor to publicly traded and private biotech companies, technology start-ups, and global non-profits.

Dr. Palanki holds a PharmD from Albany College of Pharmacy, Union University, and his post doctorate from Rutgers University.

Arshad M. Khanani, MD, MA, FASRS

Advisor

Arshad M. Khanani, MD, MA, FASRS, is a Managing Partner, Director of Clinical Research, and Director of Fellowship at Sierra Eye Associates and Clinical Associate Professor at the University of Nevada, Reno School of Medicine.

Dr. Khanani founded the clinical research department at Sierra Eye Associates, which is now one of the leading clinical research centers in the country. He has served as a principal investigator for over 90 clinical trials and has been a top enroller in the country for multiple Phase 1-3 trials. In addition, Dr Khanani has been the first one to perform surgical procedures in multiple surgical clinical trials dealing with sustained delivery and gene therapy. He has over 70 scientific publications. He received his medical degree from Texas Tech University Health Sciences Center, followed by an internship at Baylor College of Medicine, and an ophthalmology residency at Texas Tech.

Mark Barakat, MD, FASRS

Advisor

Dr. Barakat is Founder and Director of Research at the Retina Macula Institute of Arizona. His previous roles include retinal surgeon at Retinal Consultants of Arizona, Director of the Retinal Research Institute, Vice Chair of Clinical Research at American Vision Partners, Medical Director of Spectra Eye Surgery Center, and a Clinical Assistant Professor of Ophthalmology at University of Arizona College of Medicine. Mark Barakat, MD received his undergraduate degree in Computer Science from Duke University and his medical degree from the University of Pennsylvania. He completed residency training as chief resident at Hahnemann University, followed by a retina fellowship at the Cleveland Clinic.

Peter K Kaiser, MD, FASRS

Advisor

Dr. Kaiser is Director of the Center for Ocular Research and Evaluation (CORE) at Cole Eye Institute, as well as a Professor of Ophthalmology at Cleveland Clinic. As a National Eye Institute and National Institute of Health RO1-funded principal investigator, Dr. Kaiser leads a team involved in the evaluation of vascular biology in age-related macular degeneration (AMD) and diabetic retinopathy (DR). In addition, Dr. Kaiser is actively involved in clinical research, having served as Study Chairman for numerous major, multicenter, international clinical trials, and principal investigator in over 60 trials evaluating new treatments for AMD, DR, and other retinal disorders.

Peter graduated magna cum laude with Highest Honors from Harvard College and magna cum laude from Harvard Medical School.

Jeff Heier, MD, FASRS

Advisor

Dr. Jeff Heier is the Director of Retina Service and Retina Research at Ophthalmic Consultants of Boston (OCB), one of the largest multispecialty ophthalmology practices in the United States. He is one of the leading retinal clinical researchers in the country for new treatments in exudative and non-exudative macular degeneration, diabetic macular edema, venous occlusive disease, vitreoretinal surgical techniques and instrumentation, and diagnostic imaging of the retina.

Dr. Heier received his medical degree from Boston University, completed an internship and residency at Fitzsimons Army Medical Center, and a vitreoretinal fellowship at Ophthalmic Consultants of Boston/Tufts School of Medicine. He also served as a physician in a Combat Support Hospital in the Persian Gulf War, where he was awarded a Bronze Star.

Rahul Sanghvi

A global leader in the Life Sciences industry, Rahul Singhvi is co-founder and CEO of the biomanufacturing company Resilience (National Resilience, Inc.). Previously, he served as Operating Partner at Flagship Pioneering, where he founded and operated companies launched from the innovation foundry Flagship labs. Sanghvi’s former roles also include COO of Takeda’s Vaccine Business Unit and President and CEO of Novavax, Inc. He graduated as the top-ranked chemical engineer from the Indian Institute of Technology and earned both his master’s and doctoral degrees in Chemical Engineering from MIT. He earned his MBA from the Wharton School at the University of Pennsylvania, where he graduated as a Palmer Scholar.

Pierluigi Bruschetta

With 25+ years of pharma and healthcare consulting experience, Bruschetta has advised numerous global product teams at top blue-chip pharmaceutical and medical device companies, as well as CEOs and CCOs of fast-growing US and EU based biotechs. He most recently served as founder and global lead for LifeSciences Consultants, after holding partnership and leadership roles in the pharma and healthcare practices of various global strategic consulting firms (including Gemini Consulting and A.T. Kearney). Bruschetta has focused a significant portion of his recent work and applied research on commercial strategy and go-to-market issues of innovative gene and cell therapies worldwide.

He holds an MS in Cell Biology and Biotechnology from John Hopkins University, an MPH from Columbia University, an MBA from Bocconi University of Milan, Italy, and a BA from Palermo University, Italy.

Emmett Cunningham, Jr., MD, PhD, MPH

A full-time entrepreneur and investor for 20+ years, Dr. Cunningham is an internationally recognized specialist in infectious and inflammatory eye disease. His most recent roles were at the Blackstone Group, where he served as Executive Advisor and previously as Senior Managing Director. He is the founder of the Ophthalmology Innovation Summit (OIS) symposium, where he also served as chairman for more than a decade. Dr. Cunningham received an MD and MPH in epidemiology and statistics from Johns Hopkins University and a PhD in neuroscience from the University of California at San Diego. He completed both a residency in ophthalmology and fellowship training in Corneal Disease and Uveitis at UCSF and The Francis I. Proctor Foundation, a medical retina and uveitis fellowship at Moorfields Eye Hospital in London, and a fellowship in public health ophthalmology at the Wilmer Eye Institute.

Anurag Bagaria, BS, MBA

Board of Directors

Anurag Bagaria is the Chairman & CEO of Kemwell Biopharma, India's largest biopharmaceutical contract development and manufacturing organization (CDMO), providing customized process development, product development and manufacturing solutions for biologics and cell therapies to global biopharmaceutical companies. He expanded Kemwell's facilities in India, Sweden and the U.S., providing CDMO services for small and large molecule drugs for global markets. Mr. Anurag holds a degree in Chemical Engineering from Cornell University and an MBA from the Kellogg School of Management.