After 14 years on the board of Moderna, the biotech that became a household name after developing an mRNA vaccine for Covid-19, chemical engineer Robert Langer, Sc.D., is retiring from the company’s board.
“I have decided that now is the right time for me to step down,” Langer said in a press release. “It has been an honor to contribute to the groundbreaking work and incredible progress the company has achieved.” He will continue serving as an advisor to the company going forward, according to the release.
Stephen Berenson, managing partner at Flagship Pioneering, is also stepping down from the board, while David Rubenstein, co-founder and co-chairman of The Carlyle Group, is joining effective August 5. Moderna was incubated within Flagship’s innovation branch, Flagship Labs, before launching in 2010.
Langer is one of nine Institute Professors at MIT, the highest title a faculty member can achieve at the university. According to his biography on his lab’s website, Langer has written more than 1,600 academic articles, holds more than 1,495 issued and pending patents, and is the most cited engineer in history. His sprawling research lab has launched countless companies, including several that have been acquired by Big Pharmas like J&J and Pfizer.
Langer served on the FDA’s SCIENCE Board from 1995 to 2002 and was chairman of the advisory board from 1999 to 2002.
He received one of the highest awards an engineer can win, the Queen Elizabeth Prize for Engineering, in 2015 “for his revolutionary advances and leadership in engineering at the interface with chemistry and medicine.”
“We are all very proud of the work my father has done at Moderna and I look forward to spending even more time working along side [sic] him to help him build the next great generation of biotech companies,” Langer’s son Michael Langer wrote in a LinkedIn post.