Boutique Venture Partners

Rami El Assal is a scientist-clinician who trained at Harvard and Stanford Medical Schools. Before founding Boutique Venture Partners, he worked as a Research Scientist at the Canary Center for Cancer Early Detection at Stanford University.

Dr. Connelly is a surgeon-scientist who trained at Columbia University and the University of California, San Francisco. Over roughly two decades he has held academic positions while also treating patients in private practice.

Julien Hédou is the CEO and co-founder of Surge Care, a startup in Boutique Venture Partners' portfolio that works on precision medicine in surgery. He holds a master's degree in biomedical informatics and machine learning from Stanford University, where his work centered on integrating omics datasets to predict clinical outcomes.

Zhenan Bao is a chemical engineer and materials scientist who serves as the K.K. Lee Professor in Chemical Engineering and Chair of the Department of Chemical Engineering at Stanford University, and is Founding Director of the Stanford Wearable Electronics Initiative (eWEAR). She has authored more than 700 refereed publications and over 100 US patents, with more than 210,000 citations. Her honors include the Royal Society of Chemistry Beilby Medal and the L'Oreal UNESCO Women in Science Award North America Laureate, along with election to the National Academy of Engineering, the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, and the National Academy of Inventors.

S. Thaddeus Connelly is co-founder and General Partner of Boutique Venture Partners, a venture capital firm focused on early-stage investments in healthcare and life sciences, and holds a faculty position at UCSF. He serves as Chief Cheerleader at GengyveUSA, which markets an oral care product. His work draws on a clinical and research background to advise AI designers and engineers on clinical applications and to identify needs in the healthcare sector.

Jay Gupta is a Sleep and Maxillofacial Surgeon who trained at UCSF, Stanford, and UC-Davis. He also holds an MBA and works as an angel investor.

Dr. Justin Young is a Cosmetic and Maxillofacial Surgeon who practices in San Francisco and Atlanta. Alongside his clinical work, he invests as an angel investor supporting entrepreneurs.

Matthew Wahlrab is a founder working in innovation management as a service and advises on intellectual property. He has directed more than $100 million in investment capital and facilitated the sale of over 2,000 patent assets on behalf of clients.

Yaser Alorainy is a financial lawyer who graduated from Stanford Law School. He has held various public and private roles in the finance industry, including serving as General Counsel and Board Secretary of the National Debt Management Center of Saudi Arabia.

Bassam El Fahmawi is a scientist and entrepreneur who invented iSWAB, a swab-based collection technology, and HemaSure-OMICs, a direct draw-tube for whole blood multi-omics analysis. He is the founder and CTO of Mawi DNA Technologies and previously led the commercialization of nucleic acid purification technologies at Beckman Coulter Genomics (formerly Agencourt) and Corning. He holds a Ph.D. in Microbiology from the University of Alberta and has published several patents in nucleic acid purification and sample collection.

A surgeon-scientist with an extensive academic and clinical background, he has held academic appointments including a professorship at UCSF, where he earned both his MD and PhD.

Craig Rochester is a patent attorney and fund advisor with more than 20 years of legal and business experience in life sciences and computational science. He has litigated patents for clients including Biogen and Corning, provided opinion work for clients such as Pfizer, and led the development and licensing of a patent portfolio covering inventions from Intellectual Ventures inventors. He holds a Ph.D. in Genetics from Cornell University Medical College and a JD from Fordham Law School.

Kadambari (Kad) Beelwar works in digital health and serves as Telehealth Manager at Stanford Children's Health & Lucile Packard Children's Hospital. She is pursuing an Executive MBA at Wharton Business School with a focus on finance and entrepreneurship.

Martin Schmieg has 35 years of business experience across the global life sciences industry. He served as Chief Financial Officer for Cytometrics, Advanced Bionics, Sirna Therapeutics, and Isolagen. At Advanced Bionics he helped structure the company's $4.2 billion sale to Boston Scientific, and at Sirna Therapeutics he co-developed a strategic plan that led to its $1.3 billion acquisition by Merck & Co.

George Church is a geneticist and molecular engineer who holds the Robert Winthrop Professorship of Genetics at Harvard Medical School and is a Professor of Health Sciences and Technology at Harvard and MIT. He has authored over 400 publications and is among the most-cited scientists globally. He has been elected to the National Academy of Sciences and the National Academy of Engineering and received the Franklin Institute's Bower Award and Prize for Achievement in Science.

Ophir Klein is a professor at the University of California, San Francisco (UCSF), holding the Larry L. Hillblom Distinguished Professorship in Craniofacial Anomalies and the Charles J. Epstein Professorship of Human Genetics. He earned his M.D. and Ph.D. from Yale University School of Medicine and completed residencies in Pediatrics at Yale-New Haven Hospital and in Clinical Genetics at UCSF. His research addresses mechanisms of embryonic organ formation and regenerative medicine, with a focus on how stem cells drive renewal and regeneration.

Rami El Assal is the Founder and Managing Partner of Boutique Venture Partners, a venture capital firm focused on early-stage investments in biotech, medtech, digital health, and healthtech companies. He holds a D.D.S. from Ajman University and completed postdoctoral research fellowships at Harvard Medical School and Stanford University School of Medicine, where he conducted research on cell-based cancer immunotherapy and tissue-mimicking 3-D microenvironments. Prior to founding his venture firm, he served as a Research Scientist at Stanford's Canary Center for Cancer Early Detection and has advised multiple venture capital and healthcare companies.