Propel Bio Partners

Xue Hua, PhD, has clinical research, operations, and regulatory experience in biotech. She previously served as Vice President of Clinical Development, Research at Athira Pharma (2015–2022), where she built the clinical team and led Fosgonimeton (ATH-1017) Phase I–III trials for Alzheimer's disease, Parkinson's disease dementia, and dementia with Lewy bodies. Before industry, she was an assistant professor at the University of Southern California working on imaging technologies for neurological disorders, and she holds a PhD in Biomedical Engineering from UCLA.

Venture partner with a background in executive strategy, execution, commercialization, and acceleration.

Associate focused on data science.

Senior advisor and biopharmaceutical executive focused on neuroscience, new product commercialization, and marketing.

General Partner described as an investor, entrepreneur, inventor, and strategist.

Advisor focused on leadership development, technology, AI, firm creation, strategy, and entrepreneurship.

Senior advisor specializing in product, medical, and regulatory strategies across neurology, pulmonology, rare diseases, and ophthalmology.

Senior advisor and pharma executive with experience in product approvals, ethics, drug development, and regulatory sciences.

Safiya Alavi is a Strategic Advisor at Propel Bio Partners with more than 30 years of leadership experience in the biopharmaceutical industry, spanning executive and board roles. She serves as a Board Director, Compensation Committee Chair, and Audit Committee member at BioAtla (Nasdaq: BCAB), and has previously held positions including board director at Ilya Pharma, founding CEO of Axerion Therapeutics (now ReNetX Bio), head of the U.S. subsidiary of Vernalis, and EVP and GM of Andrx. Earlier in her career, she worked in commercial and marketing roles at Pfizer and Vernalis, and she currently mentors entrepreneurs through Springboard Enterprises Life Science Council and as an Entrepreneur in Residence at Yale University's Office of Cooperative Research.

Senior advisor with expertise in entrepreneurship, startups, new product commercialization, and executive management.

Erik Gonzalez-Leon holds a PhD in biomedical engineering from the University of California, Irvine, where his research addressed improving the functional properties of self-assembled articular cartilage and knee meniscus tissue for implantation in a large-animal model. He previously served as a Research Transfer Group Fellow at Beall Applied Innovation, assessing scientific and engineering inventions from UC Irvine through technical evaluation, patentability review, market research, and prior art searches.

Dr. Jiang holds a PhD in Health Economics and Outcomes Research from the University of Washington, with research focused on drug pricing and reimbursement policy, pharmacoeconomic analysis of therapeutics and diagnostics, and clinical trial design and real-world evidence. She previously worked as a Venture Capital Associate at Kendall Capital Partners evaluating early-stage biotech startups, and held internships at Merck, Illumina, and BioMarin Pharmaceuticals as a health economist and data scientist, plus a business development fellowship with Genentech/Nucleate. She earned a bachelor's degree from Peking University and a Master of Public Health from Columbia University.