When the University of Pittsburgh set out to find a visionary to lead the development of Pitt BioForge, its facility in Hazelwood Green that will accelerate innovations in biomanufacturing, it needed someone with an extensive background in technology and the life sciences. It found that person in Kaigham (Ken) J. Gabriel.

In early January, Anantha Shekhar, senior vice chancellor for the health sciences and John and Gertrude Petersen Dean of the School of Medicine, appointed Gabriel the inaugural chief executive officer of BioForge and director of Pitt’s Advanced Biomanufacturing Institute (ABI).

“Ken’s depth of experience as an innovator across government, academic and commercial sectors makes him a perfect fit for leveraging Pitt’s world-class research in medicine and the health sciences at BioForge,” Shekhar says.

With Gabriel’s appointment, Pitt embarks on an ambitious venture to develop mRNA, cell and gene therapies at BioForge that can treat a range of conditions, including cancer and blindness, and help position Pittsburgh as a leader in life sciences commercialization.

Gabriel believes that as more and more precision therapies and personalized medicines are developed, manufacturing them will require the the innovations that BioForge will be demonstrating and prototyping.

“Existing pharmaceutical manufacturing processes are structured and optimized to produce millions to billions of the same drugs and therapies, designed for the nominal, ‘average’ target recipient—exactly the opposite of what’s needed for precision medicines,” he says.

Gabriel was most recently the founding chief operating officer of Wellcome Leap, an international organization working at the intersection of life sciences and engineering to deliver critical medical and health care innovations on accelerated timelines. In a little more than two years, he helped develop 10 ongoing programs—ranging from artificial kidneys to resilient aging—with annual funding of $200 million to more than 150 international research organizations on six continents.

Before that, he spent five years as the president and CEO of Draper—an MIT spin-off known for developing the Apollo guidance computer in the 1960s. He expanded the company’s offerings to include biomedical innovations in end-to-end cell therapy, engineered human organ-on-a-chip platforms for drug discovery and the world’s first adaptive pediatric heart valve.

Gabriel previously served as a corporate vice president and the founding co-lead of the Advanced Technology and Projects group at Google and deputy director and acting director of the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency in the U.S. Department of Defense. He also was a tenured professor in both the Electrical & Computer Engineering Department and the Robotics Institute at Carnegie Mellon University.

Gabriel, who earned his bachelor’s degree in electrical engineering at Pitt, has a doctorate in electrical engineering and computer science from MIT. He is regarded as the “godfather” of MEMS, which are miniaturized and integrated mechanical and electrical devices that make a range of game-changing capabilities possible in smaller packaging: They help cell phones orient themselves, air bags know when to fire and biomedical tools save lives. He is cofounder of Akustica, a start-up that pioneered digital silicon microphones that was acquired by Bosch, and is recognized as a World Economic Forum Technology Pioneer.

In 2021, the Richard King Mellon Foundation announced it would provide a $100 million grant to Pitt to build BioForge. The Cambridge, Massachusetts-based company ElevateBio will be the facility’s founding anchor tenant. 

Read more from the Winter 2024 issue.