STANFORD UNIVERSITY | 2018 - 2023

• Doctor of Philosophy in Bioengineering
• Master of Science in Bioengineering
• Stanford Graduate Fellowship, Abbott Laboratories Fellow
• Stanford Ignite Certificate, Entrepreneurial and Small Business Operation.

UNIVERSITY OF MINNESOTA | SEP ’13 – MAY ’17

• Bachelor of Biomedical Engineering, summa cum laude
• Bachelor of Science in Physics, sigma pi sigma
• Minors in Chemistry and Mathematics
• Accelerated, pre-matriculation programs
  • Post-Secondary Enrollment Options (PSEO) – 16 years old
  • Talented Youth Mathematic Program (UMTYMP) – 14 years old

Stanford Graduate Fellowship, Abbott Laboratories Fellow

Co-authored research published in Science, Cancer Cell, Circulation, and more

Co-developed a transcriptional scoring tool for measuring T cell exhaustion — relevant in cancer & autoimmune therapy

STANFORD UNIVERSITY | Graduate Research Fellow, Department of Bioengineering 2018 – 2025

• Designed computational and experimental tools to study immune cell activity and dysfunction
• Built custom data pipelines and subroutines using R and Python to analyze biological datasets, including bulk and
  single-cell RNA transcriptomics and atomic-resolution protein structures: extraction, cleaning, transformation, non-linear dimensionality reduction, graph-based clustering, generalized linear model fitting, etc.
• Conducted original research on developing a transcriptional score of human T cell exhaustion and its application in aging T cells, CAR and non-engineered T cells in cancer patients, and endogenous T cells in non-malignant diseases (e.g. SARS-CoV-2 / COVID-19, autoimmune psoriasis, STAT3 GOF)
  • Impact: new tool for quantifying the severity of immune cell dysfunction from bulk and single-cell RNA sequencing to study immune cell phenotypes and patient outcome
• Conducted original research on engineering drug- and light-switchable proteins
  • Impact: new tool for interrogating cell signaling biology in healthy and disease states
• Published several articles on computational protein and cell engineering projects in research journals including Science, Blood, Cancer Cell, Circulation
• Wrote grant proposals to solicit research funding from govt and NGOs – awarded >$2.5M in total

ERGO BIO LLC | Partner JUN ’18 – PRESENT

• Advised >15 healthcare investors and companies on proprietary deal opportunities, including equity investments, asset in-licensing, and business development partnerships
• Clients included Sam Altman (CEO of OpenAI), Foresite Labs, Tim Opler (CEO of Torreya Partners), Retro Biosciences, Maze Therapeutics, Humboldt Fund, Bioverge, Deep Origin, and others
• Conducted due diligence on behalf of private equity firms, family offices, angel investors
• Syndicated >$3M in early-stage biotech deals through special purpose vehicles (SPVs)
• Hired and managed small teams of consultants for various client projects
• Built a biotech venture community and organized networking events, which typically had 40 to 100+ attendees and served as a unique deal sourcing platform (Ergo Bio Meetups)

VICTOR FAMILY FOUNDATION | Chief Scientific Advisor JAN ’24 - PRESENT

• Provided strategic guidance on philanthropic investments in cancer research, collaborating with leading institutions including Stanford, Harvard, Dana-Farber, and UNC to advance innovative scientific programs
• Fostered partnerships with academic medical centers to accelerate breakthroughs in cancer treatment

CELLARITY | Data Scientist Co-op, Department of Computational Biology JUN ’23 – JAN ’24

• Analyzed millions of single-cell transcriptomes of extracted liver tissues from 100+ obese patients
• Built data pipelines to process and analyze single-cell datasets using Python and ScanPy; investigated numerous literature-reported and company-defined (proprietary) cell types
• Integrated donor-level genotyping to evaluate direct and indirect effects of SNPs and identified numerous enriched genes that likely altered disease course
• Project results was a contribution to a $1B partnership deal with Novo Nordisk
• Documented progress and code on Confluence and ReadTheDocs

STANFORD UNIVERSITY | Senior Business Development Intern, Office of Technology Licensing MAR ’20 – SEP ’21

• Wrote marketing abstracts on invention disclosures and ideated on commercial applications
• Identified companies to solicit technology licensing and support the deal process for out-licensing
• Built relationships with venture capital firms for the tech transfer office

MYTHOS BIOTECHNOLOGY FUND | Partner and Fund Manager FEB ’18 – OCT ’20

• Invested in publicly-traded stocks of small- and mid-cap biotech companies (2020 memo)
• Organized partnership meetings and trained analysts on conducting diligence
• Reformed accounting practices and consolidated transaction records.

STANFORD UNIVERSITY | Life Science Research Professional, Department of Neurobiology JUN ’17 – JUN ’18

• Engineered optogenetic proteases using structure-guided rational design
• Constructed cellular assays to evaluate proteolytic performance.

UNIVERSITY OF MINNESOTA | Researcher, Dept. of Chemical Engineering and Materials Science APR ’13 – MAY ’17

• Engineered proteins using directed evolution through yeast display and flow cytometry
• Used Python to evaluate protein variant enrichment in sorted populations
• Characterized stability and structure of evolved proteins with spectroscopy and chromatography

MASONIC CANCER CENTER | Research Intern, Program of Health Disparities and Cancer Research JUN ’15 – AUG ’15

• Compiled a literature database on clinical interventions in vulnerable patient population
• Utilized and navigated biomedical bibliographic databases

8. Duong, V.T., …, Mackall, C.L., 2025 “Transcriptional signature of CAR T cell exhaustion”. In preparation.

7. Kaczanowska, S., Murty, T., Alimadadi, A., Contreras, C. F., Duault, C., Subrahmanyam, P. B., ..., Duong, V.T., …, & Kaplan, R. N. (2024). Immune determinants of CAR-T cell expansion in solid tumor patients receiving GD2 CAR-T cell therapy. Cancer Cell, 42(1), 35-51.

6. Xie, B.J. and Duong, V.T., 2022 “Therapeutic peptides: market and manufacturing”. Peptide and Peptidomimetic Therapeutics. Academic Press, 689-698.

5. Freitas, K.A., Belk, J.A., Sotillo, E., Daniel, B., Sandor, K., Klysz, D., Duong, V.T., Burdsall, K., Xu, P., Malipatlolla, M., Donovan, M.G., Weber, E.W., Majzner, R.G., Chang, H.Y., Espinosa, J.M., Satpathy, A.T., Mackall, C.L., 2022. “Enhanced effector activity of mediator kinase module deficient CAR-T cells”. Science, 378.6620, eabn5647.

4. Majzner, R.G., Frank, M.J., Mount, C., Tousley, A., Kurtz, D.M., Sworder, B., Murphy, K.A., Manousopoulou, A., Kohler, K., Rotiroti, M.C., Spiegel, J.Y., Natkunam, Y., Younes, S.F., Sotillo, E., Duong, V.T., Macaulay, C., Good, Z., Xu, P., Labanieh, L., Wang, L.D., Alizadeh, A.A., Monje, M., Miklos, D.B., Mackall, C.L., 2020. “CD58 aberrations limit durable responses to CD19 CAR in large B cell lymphoma patients treated with axicabtagene ciloleucel but can be overcome through novel CAR engineering”. Blood, 136, 53-54.

3. Duong, V.T. and Hackel, B.J. “Small proteins as therapeutics, diagnostics, and theranostics for precision medicine”. In preparation.

2. Kasinpila, P., Shad, R., Duong, V., Fong, R., Quach, N., Kong, S., Perez, C., Huang, P. and Hiesinger, W., 2019. “Computational Protein Modeling to Engineer a CXC Chemokine Receptor Type 4 (CXCR-4) Agonist to Prevent Ischemic Heart Failure”. Circulation, 140(1), pp.A12976-A12976.

1. Kruziki, M.A., Bhatnagar, S., Woldring, D.R., Duong, V.T. and Hackel, B.J., 2015. “A 45-amino-acid scaffold mined from the PDB for high-affinity ligand engineering”. Chemistry & Biology, 22(7), pp.946- 956.

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