Biography
Alexis Ji joined Illumina Ventures as a partner in 2016. She brings 15 years of experience in research and venture investment in the genomics and biopharmaceutical industries. Alexis focuses on investing in early-stage life science and technology platforms and applications in tools, therapeutics, and diagnostics. Alexis has served on the boards of Illumina Ventures portfolio companies, NanoCellect Biomedical, SQZ Biotechnologies, and Twist Bioscience (TWST). Prior to Illumina Ventures, Alexis was a principal at WuXi Healthcare Ventures, where she focused on investments in therapeutics and medtech companies. Alexis was instrumental in the investment in companies such as Twist Bioscience, 23andme, Juno Therapeutics, Unity Biotechnology, Vivace Therapeutics, Medeor Therapeutics, and Ideaya Therapeutics, among others. Before joining WuXi, Alexis was an investment consultant at ARCH Venture Partners, where she evaluated early-stage life science and physical science opportunities and was involved in the founding of Twist Bioscience and the investment in Nextcode Health, and provided operating assistance to portfolio companies. Previously, Alexis held senior scientist positions at Merck in early drug discovery, at Roche in virology translational research and clinical trial development, and at Life Technologies in molecular diagnostics and next-generation sequencing. Alexis earned her Ph.D. in Molecular Genetics from Washington University School of Medicine and an MBA from University.