Melanie Leitner, PhD, Founder,Accelerating NeuroVentures, LLC; Chief Scientific Officer ALS Investment Fund

Dr. Melanie Leitner currently serves as the Chief Scientific Officer for the ALS Investment Fund (a life sciences VC) and is the Founder of Accelerating NeuroVentures, LLC, a solo consulting practice providing strategic, programmatic, and business development services to investors, biopharma, and non-profit clients interested in funding, initiating, or advancing programs within the neuroscience translational space.

Prior to joining the ALS Investment Fund, Dr. Leitner was Chief Scientific Officer at the ALS non-profit Prize4Life, and she has also held Director positions at Biogen and at the non-profit organizations FasterCures and the Society for Neuroscience. Earlier in her career she held two AAAS Science and Technology Policy Fellowships, a Diplomacy Fellowship at USAID and a Congressional Fellowship in the office of US Senator Dick Durbin. Melanie was awarded a Howard Hughes Predoctoral Fellowship and a Lucille P. Markey Fellowship for her Ph.D. work at Washington University, and graduated Magna Cum Laude with an Sc.B. from Brown University; all in the field of Neuroscience.

She currently sits on the Muscular Dystrophy Association’s Venture Philanthropy Committee, the Common Data Elements Steering Committee for NINDS, the Therapy Evaluation Committee for the Sean M. Healey and AMG Center for ALS, and the Scientific Advisory Boards for Gatehouse Bio and the Carney Institute for Brain Sciences at Brown University. She represents the ALS Investment Fund as a Board observer on the Boards of Verge Genomics, Apic Bio, and the microbiome company Bloom Science.