WATERTOWN, Mass.– Seismic Therapeutic, Inc., a biotechnology company advancing machine learning for immunology drug development, today announced the appointment of Eric Larson as Senior Vice President of Finance and Heather Vital as Vice President of R&D Strategy. These experienced business leaders join Seismic at a pivotal time for the company as it approaches the next stage of growth to build a pipeline of novel biologics to treat autoimmune diseases.
“We are delighted to welcome these two outstanding and accomplished industry leaders to our leadership team, bringing a wealth of expertise in areas of finance and strategic planning to support our future growth,” said Jo Viney, PhD, Founder, President and CEO of Seismic Therapeutic. “Eric’s decades of experience in a range of financial leadership roles in the biopharma industry and his proven skills in building operations infrastructure will be invaluable as we evolve Seismic and grow as an immunology platform and pipeline company. Heather’s diverse expertise across R&D strategy and operations, program and alliance management, and commercialization for biopharma companies and her proven skills in developing strategies in new market areas are critical capabilities as Seismic takes on the enormous opportunities ahead of us.”
Eric Larson, Senior Vice President of Finance
“It is exciting to be part of such a talented team at Seismic focused on a new drug development paradigm,” said Mr. Larson. “I look forward to using my experience building and leading finance teams and my operations skills to help a growing organization execute on its strategy, goals and mission to impact the lives of patients.”
Eric Larson brings nearly 30 years of financial leadership experience with private and public companies across multiple industries. His expertise extends across accounting and controls, financial planning, tax and treasury. Prior to joining Seismic, Eric was Vice President of Finance at Pandion Therapeutics where he built the finance and accounting infrastructure in support of its transition to a Nasdaq-listed public company. Previously, he was the Corporate Controller for Proteostasis Therapeutics and the Vice President and Chief Accounting Officer for Northern Power Systems. Earlier in his career, he held financial leadership roles at Biogen Idec, CMGI, Inc., and Ernst & Young. Eric is a CPA and earned his BA from Grove City College.
Heather Vital, Vice President of R&D Strategy
“This is an invigorating time to join Seismic as the company realizes the potential of integrating machine learning to develop novel treatments for autoimmune diseases,” said Ms. Vital. “I am eager to leverage my experience to help the company achieve its aspirations as a drug innovator and to create a host of new medicines for patients.”
Heather Vital joins Seismic with more than 15 years of experience across strategic and operational functions, including program and alliance management, portfolio planning and R&D strategy and commercialization. She most recently was Senior Director, Portfolio Strategy and Operations for Relay Therapeutics where she contributed to portfolio strategies for pipeline programs and was responsible for alliance management with a large biopharma partnership and a research collaboration. She served as Senior Director of Program Leadership at Deciphera Pharmaceuticals where she was the program lead for two oncology drug programs including one through product approval. Previously, Heather had a tenure at Biogen, culminating in the role of Director, R&D Strategy and Portfolio Leadership and for several disease areas. Her earlier roles at Biogen included portfolio strategy for spinal muscular atrophy, launching SPINRAZA as part of the global brand team and new product commercialization for the immunology therapeutic area. Heather has a BS from Babson College, MBA from the MIT Sloan School of Management, and a Master of Science (SM) from the Harvard-MIT Health Sciences and Technology Program.
