Sage Bionetworks Appoints New President

Luca Foschini to lead strategy and growth at nonprofit

Seattle, WA - Biomedical research nonprofit Sage Bionetworks has appointed Luca Foschini, PhD as President. Dr. Foschini will lead the organization’s strategy and operations while continuing to expand Sage’s impact on the nature of scientific discovery.

Dr. Luca Foschini joins Sage Bionetworks after 10 years at Evidation Health, where he was co-founder and Chief Data Scientist of the health-tech company. During his tenure, Dr. Foschini built, led, and retained a diverse team of more than 50 scientists to provide the world’s top biopharma organizations with technology and methodology guidance for collecting and analyzing person-generated health data (PGHD) from sources such as smartphones and wearables in order to measure human health. In his new role as President at Sage, Foschini will build on Sage’s reputation as a leader in biomedical data science and champion open practices.

“Luca’s deep experience, wide expertise, and remarkable longstanding passion for correcting the odd ways we attempt to build insights in health make him the obvious choice to take forward the Sage Bionetworks mission. His exceptional track record in the fields of machine learning, behavioral economics, and medical informatics are an ideal fit for Sage’s north star of accelerating the translation of data-driven science into medicine,” said Stephen H. Friend MD, PhD, Sage Bionetworks’ Board Chair.

“I think we’re all a bit dumbfounded by the seemingly sudden emergence of a wealth of new AI applications in the last few months. But if you look deeper, such growth wouldn’t have happened without open source software developed over decades and longstanding collaborative research initiatives. I hope to see the same acceleration of progress in the health sciences someday once we find new models to encourage researchers to work together. For the past 13 years, Sage Bionetworks has been a leader in innovating across disciplines and traditional research silos to improve health sciences as a whole. I am excited to support Sage Bionetworks’ team and the researchers, clinicians, and patients who benefit from our collaborative approach as we continue this legacy,” said Dr. Foschini.

Dr. Foschini holds a PhD in Computer Science from the University of California, Santa Barbara and a Master’s degree in Computer Engineering from the Sant’Anna School of Pisa. He has also conducted theoretical computer science and cybersecurity research in academia and industry, including research positions at Google and Ask.com. Dr. Foschini is a retired competitive programmer who represented Italy in the International Olympiads in Informatics and later coached the Italian national team.