ABOUT LIBERE JENSEN NDACAYISABA
Libère J. Ndacayisaba, PhD, is a Burundian-American biomedical scientist, entrepreneur, and philanthropist whose work spans the frontier of medical technology and the fight for equitable access to healthcare.
He grew up in Burundi and across years of displacement before arriving in the United States at twenty. He holds a Bachelor of Science in Biotechnology from Syracuse University and a PhD in Medical Biophysics from the University of Southern California, where he was named the Keck School of Medicine PhD commencement speaker and received the Order of Arête, USC’s highest honor for a graduate student.
Over more than a decade in biomedicine, he has worked at the intersection of single-cell biology, machine learning, and oncology — with research and leadership roles at Novartis, NextRNA Therapeutics, and Vitra Labs, and authorship on multiple peer-reviewed publications.
He is co-founder of a medtech startup developing immunomodulation therapies for solid tumors, and advises organizations across computational biology and drug discovery.
His commitment to access drives his philanthropy: he is founder and chairman of the Tetradenia Foundation, whose mission is to bring quality healthcare to geographically remote and impoverished communities, and he serves as a board director to social-impact enterprises.
He is also the author of the award-winning memoir Transient Anchors: From Refugee Tents to Research Towers, which explores survival, faith, displacement, and the transformative power of education.
Fluent in English, French, and Kirundi, he lives in Los Angeles, California.