Dr. Tzannis is an executive and entrepreneur with over 28 years of pharmaceutical industry experience from target selection, drug discovery to advanced clinical development. He is the Founder, past President & CEO and until recently the COO of Aeovian Pharmaceuticals, Inc., a San Francisco Bay-area venture focusing on the discovery and development of innovative therapeutics to treat rare and age-related diseases. Prior to Aeovian, he served as Entrepreneur in Residence and Director of Clinical Sciences at the Buck Institute for Research in Aging, leading efforts to translate fundamental aging research innovations to human proof of concept; the founder and CEO of ARdaix Pharmaceuticals SAS and co-founder and COO of Theralpha SAS. Both of these roles focused on the development of novel therapeutics for the management of acute and chronic pain. Leading to that, Dr. Tzannis served as member of the executive team and Vice President of Pharmaceutical R&D at AcelRx Pharmaceuticals, Inc.; Vice President of R&D at iMEDD Inc.; Director of R&D and Licensing & Acquisitions at Nektar Therapeutics, while he started his career as Research Scientist & Group Leader at Alza Corporation. He holds numerous patents and applications, peer-reviewed publications and has received funding grants from both government and private foundations. He holds MS/PhD and Dipl.Eng. degrees in Chemical Engineering from Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute (Troy, NY) and NTUA (Athens, Greece), respectively.