Noubar Afeyan

Noubar Afeyan (Western ; born in 1962) is an American-Canadian entrepreneur, inventor, and philanthropist. He is best known for co-founding the biotechnology company Moderna, through his venture capital firm, Flagship Pioneering, and for co-founding humanitarian projects such as Aurora Prize and The Future Armenian. As of November 2021, his net worth is estimated at $3.3 billion. Personal life Afeyan was born to Armenian parents in Beirut, Lebanon in 1962. His grandfather survived the Armenian genocide. Talking about his background, Afeyan said: "One of the only unfortunate advantages Armenians have had by having gone through a genocide and having spread around the world is that we do have an experience of escaping and of immigrating and of constantly restarting." His family fled Lebanon in 1975, during the civil war there. He graduated from Loyola High School in Montreal in 1978. He received his B.Eng. in chemical engineering from McGill University in 1983 and then moved to the US and earned a Ph.D. in biochemical engineering from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) in 1987. He was the first PhD graduate from MIT's Center for Bioprocess Engineering, at the time the only institution with that degree program. He became a U.S. citizen in 2008. Besides English, Afeyan speaks Western Armenian. Afeyan is married to Anna (born Gunnardottir), a Swedish-born engineer who moved to the US in 1988. They have four children. Academic career and inventions Afeyan has authored numerous scientific papers. He has patented over 100 inventions. Between 2000 and 2016 he was a senior lecturer at the MIT Sloan School of Management and is currently (as of 2020) a lecturer at Harvard Business School.